GIJoe Secrets: Part 2
by Jaenelle Angelline
Summary: The search for Shana commences as Snake Eyes slips deeper into depression. One member of the Joes finally hatches a desperate plan to find her and get her. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 25: Briefing

**Chapter 25: Briefing**

The briefing room was packed.

By the time the Joe team had left Africa, word had already gotten out around base that Shana wasn't with them. By the time they landed in Fort Hamilton, everyone knew that she'd been captured by the militia members and sold to human traffickers.

But they didn't know the whole story until the team came home.

Hawk appropriated the largest conference room on base for this meeting and called everyone currently on base to attend. Normally mission debriefings would be private, limited to himself and the team, but in addition to being a mission debriefing he was also looking at it as a strategy session, and the more people you had in on a session like that the better it would be. Especially when it concerned a member of the team as universally respected and beloved as Scarlett.

He sat at the head of the table and felt every day of his forty-plus years fall squarely on his shoulders as he listened to Flint's voice describing the mission. From the time they'd landed, the relatively light, easy days with the recon teams out in the jungle and the base team, including Scarlett, constructing defenses for the villagers and teaching them to make and use weapons effectively. Hawk had his own reservations about that, but as Flint launched into the discovery of the children, their rescue, their desperate flight to escape from the pursuing rogues, and Scarlett and Snake Eyes' desperate gambit to keep the rogues from pursuing the Joes and the children (and the price they'd paid for that decision) all he could do was sit silently and listen.

Flint said they'd questioned Zimurinda about the possible whereabouts of his rogues, and where they would have taken Shana. He told them that Zimurinda had mentioned the name 'Sandra' but it wasn't until the Joes actually got to the abandoned quarry's hospital in Kinshasa that they realized that 'Sandra' was Shana and Snake Eyes' old enemy from the ICC and Colombia. Flint's voice went flat as he described the scene in that hospital room; Sandra dead, her nose broken and driven into her brain in a move that only Shana could have pulled off; the big African guard, dead when Shana had driven a needle into his artery and ripped the artery open; the restraint table, the vials of drugs and needles—Flint didn't have to tell them what they were or what they were likely used for; everyone in that room already knew. Hawk felt sick. Shana was strong, but he was certain she wouldn't be able to deal with the drugs.

"All right," he said wearily as Flint finally stopped speaking in that old, tired, worn voice Hawk had heard over the satphone. He understood how his Warrant Officer felt; he felt the same way. Flint would have to be disciplined for losing a team member in the jungle—it was unacceptable by Joe standards—but nothing Hawk could do to him would equal what he was already thinking and feeling for himself. And all of this paled in comparison to the enormity of the task of getting Shana back. They had to try and find her, but dear God, there were so many places in the world where she could have been taken; how were they supposed to find her? "I'm not going to yell at anyone over how this mission went; I'll save it for after we find Shana. Now. She has left the Congo, and according to the intel Flint got from Zimurinda, the slavers will be taking her to Amsterdam because she's too distinctive to be sold in Africa so they'll take her to a major European market.

"The first thing I have to do is inform Lieutenant General Johnson that she's missing. After that—anyone have ideas?"

"Ask Johnson to contact INTERPOL and circulate Shana's picture and bio and fingerprints worldwide." Allie's soft contralto came from partway down the table, where she sat with Cam, Courtney, Alex and Olivia. "And then let's send a team to Amsterdam and let's get their government to help us turn the city upside down. A slave market can't be that hard to find."

"Intel says the market's pretty well hidden. Word is that you can't get 'in' unless you're already in or you know someone who is already 'in'."

"It's word of mouth, pretty much." Olivia leaned a little forward over the table; difficult, because her stomach was huge and she looked like she would go into labor at any second. They were only a week away from Christmas, and that meant her delivery date was coming up fast; her doctor had said the first or second week of January. She was already on maternity leave, and Clayton had taken the opportunity to bring her to base to consult over the current crisis. She'd handled a couple of high-profile human trafficking cases as an SVU cop, and he was hoping she had knowledge that would help. She hadn't complained; she'd simply accepted Clayton's surmise that she had a little more experience with human trafficking and crime victims and perhaps something she knew would be of help, and no one had raised an eyebrow or objected when she'd walked into the room with them. Now she proved why that had been a good decision. "Someone who has bought a slave from the market might meet someone who wants one, and will give them the name of a 'travel agent' they know who can take care of the 'travel arrangements'; not only the flight and hotel, but also coded paperwork and 'auction brochures'.

"Auction? Brochures? They actually put out flyers with people's pictures and say this person is being auctioned for such-and-such an amount of money?"

"No, nothing that blatant." Alex took up the thread of the story. "Sometimes the brochures will be disguised as a flyer for an exotic car auction, sometimes an antiquities auction. But the description is coded for those who know the code; the 'year' of the car could be the year that slave as born, the color is what purpose the slave can be used for, other descriptors like 'lowrider' for a short person or child, 'lots of chrome' for a slave that is physically pleasing, 'retooled engine' for someone who's had implants or cosmetic surgery, 'clunker' for someone who isn't worth much, 'parts car' for someone who is physically damaged and worth absolutely nothing except to be used up in a brothel and will be dead in a year."

Courtney snapped, "That's sick. People aren't property."

"According to the way these people think, yes, they are. These people have money and are willing to look at other human beings as commodities, as property, as things to be bought or sold or traded. A particularly pretty slave would be bought like an exotic car, kept secure, and taken out only when the owner wants to play with his new toy and put back carefully afterward, like an exotic car back into a showcase garage. When you have so much money that you can buy whatever you want, the ultimate status symbol is ownership of another human being."

"Status symbol…" Hawk choked. "So if someone buys Shana it'll be because he wants to own a status symbol? Just how much money could we possibly be talking about here?"

"Word is that Shana could be worth as much as half a million dollars." Flint clarified.

"Half a—" Hawk spluttered. "Just where did you get this intel, Flint? I find it difficult to believe Zimurinda would have given you all of this just by saying please."

"I twisted his balls a bit," Alex spoke from where she sat halfway down the table. "Literally."

"You tortured a prisoner?" Just when he thought things couldn't get any worse.

"What he did to me was torture. Leaving permanent marks and taking away my ability to have children—that was torture. What I did to him—wasn't even close to what he did to me. Don't call it the same thing because it isn't." Alex snapped back, fire in her blue eyes. "He was more afraid of the fact that I was a woman, a woman he knew he'd wronged, and he knew that could open him to more retribution later."

Hawk's mind was working. "How would an African rogue militia leader know how much a woman like Shana would be worth? How would he know this much about the human trafficking trade? I think you're not being entirely truthful about the source of your intelligence, Flint."

Flint was silent.

Hawk stood, bracing his Warrant Officer over the top of the table. "Warrant Officer Faireborn, I am giving you a direct order. Refusal to answer could land you in the brig. Where did you get the intel?"

Flint squared his shoulders but refused to meet Hawk's eyes. "I can't reveal that, Sir. I am asking you to trust me on this; the intel source is unimpeachable and the information is sound."

"Why can't you tell me?" Frustration crept into Hawk's voice.

"I made a promise, Sir."

Anger sharpened Hawk's voce. "Fine. Then you can report to the brig and stay there until you're willing to be honest with your commanding officer."

"Stop it, both of you." Polaris rose from her seat that the table, and the edge in her voice instantly grabbed everyone's attention. "Flint is keeping it a secret because I asked him to. Because I didn't want everyone to know." Her voice dropped, went flat, and she stared up at the ceiling, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. "I was the one who gave Flint the intel." Her voice shook as she said, "One of the men my uncle rented me to had his own slave. We talked in the times they left us alone." The words were an enormous burden, each one seemingly dragged from the depths of her soul, and tears dropped from her eyes as she said quietly, "Flint knows how much I just want to be normal and he said he'd never talk about it again. Please…don't send him to the brig because of me."

Hawk felt about two inches tall seeing her obvious emotional pain. There were people in this room who, until now, had known nothing about her past; with whom she could be just another Joe. Now, that veil of anonymity was gone; everyone knew.

"With that being said, yes, Shana is worth half a million dollars to the right buyer. Because she's so valuable, they'd be hesitant to scar her, mark her; she's more valuable intact. The red hair and green eyes is rare in the human population, even rarer in the slave complement, but we all know Shana would never submit willingly to anything like this. She'd fight and they would be forced to hurt her, but that would bring down her value so they can't do that. So the next avenue available to them to keep her under control would be drugs. My guess is that she's going to be kept very, very heavily drugged until the auction, and then she's going to be drugged afterwards for transport to the buyer's residence or location. And I am fairly certain the auction will be the international slave market in Amsterdam—it's where anyone with money goes, and because of her looks, she'll be a hot commodity."

"The Ferrari of the auto auction." Cover Girl said quietly.

"Yes." Polaris said as she sat down.

Hawk gestured wearily to Flint. "Sit down. You're off the hook. Jesus, if I'd known it was Cam, I wouldn't have pushed. I'm sorry."

"You should trust your people, Clayton," Olivia said firmly from where she sat. "If it had been absolutely necessary for you to know or if he didn't trust that the intel was accurate, Dash would have told you. The fact that he didn't meant he didn't think it was relevant to the current situation, and you should have trusted him. I understand we're all on edge because Shana's missing, and believe me when I say I'm very worried along with the rest of you, but you need to have faith in your people and not try to micromanage so much."

The entire conference room held their breaths. Despite that having been what most of them were thinking, they hadn't had the guts to say it—except Olivia. Granted, she was not military and she was carrying his child, but there were very few people who could speak like that to Major General Clayton Abernathy and still walk away intact.

But after a moment, Clayton sighed. "I get your point. Dash, Cam, I'm sorry." He sighed again. "All right. I know the return team is tired, so I want all of you to go unpack, get changed, get settled. In the meantime, I'll get in touch with Johnson, let him know what happened, and ask him what he thinks we can do about getting Shana back. As soon as I have his answer I'll let you all know. Dismissed." He pointed a finger at the silent shadow in the corner, but his voice was gentle as he said, "Snake Eyes, I'd like you to stay please." It was phrased as a request, not an order, so Snake Eyes could choose to disregard it if he chose, but to Hawk's surprise he did remain in his seat until the conference room had emptied.

Hawk dropped a hand on Snake Eyes' shoulder. "How are you holding up?"

Snake Eyes didn't answer; but then, he didn't have to. Hawk could feel the tension in his shoulders, feel the coiled worry and anger and frustration and anguish in his soldier's muscles. "Snake Eyes, I know it seems like part of you is gone, but please understand we will do everything we can to get her back."

Snake Eyes didn't answer. Hawk sighed. "Go on, get unpacked. I'll talk to you later." Snake Eyes nodded once, brusquely, and leaned over to get two bags; Hawk noticed, with a pang, that one of the bags was marked 'O'Hara'. He'd brought Shana's things back with him.

He watched the ninja master leave the room with a heavy, aching feeling in his heart.

"I'll get the word out to INTERPOL immediately," Was the first words out of Johnson's mouth as Hawk finished talking. "And I'll check with the FBI and the CIA find out how they want this handled. In fact, I might just hand the whole thing to the FBI, since she was also a member of their organization."

That rocked Hawk; he hadn't known that. "What?"

"This _is_ Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara we're talking about, right?" Hawk nodded. "She has maintained her clearance with the FBI and is currently a joint operative reservist. I'm sure you read her file and you know she did some classified training in Quantico after she completed Ranger School at Fort Benning?" Hawk nodded again. "Didn't she ever tell you what her classified secondary military operating specialty was?"

"I asked her once. She nearly shot me. I never asked again."

Despite the grim situation, Johnson laughed. "Yes, she would. She strikes me as that kind of person. Look, have you ever noticed she's very, very good at reading body language?"

Had he ever! Hawk nodded dryly. "She's called 'mindreader' around here at base only half-jokingly. And it's part of the reason why she's so good at translating for Snake Eyes, I think she can read his body language and figure out what he's going to say before he even knows."

"And have you ever noticed she has an uncanny sort of sixth sense for when someone's lying or telling the truth?"

"Now that I think about it...Johnson, what are you saying? She's some kind of body language reader?"

"Her official classified Military Operating Specialty title is 'Intelligence analyst—kinesic interview specialist."

"She's a military interrogator?" Hawk felt like he'd fallen down Alice's rabbit hole. "I'd never have thought—she's always so cheerful and lighthearted."

"You think all military interrogators are a Deep-Throat shadow figure lurking in the darkness torturing people? There are more effective ways of getting information out of people, and Shana O'Hara knows them all. She's very good at what she does." Johnson sobered. "Now, in addition to going through the training to become an interrogator, she also went through the course in how to beat someone interrogating her. Her interrogation resistance training—"

"Wait, wait. Interrogation resistance training? Is that anything like SERE training, where we subject people to forced PT and sleep deprivation and all the rest so they know what to expect if they're ever captured?"

Johnson sighed. "Yes, Hawk, it is. Shana O'Hara was subject to interrogation resistance and narcointerrogation resistance tactics, including being injected with various 'truth drugs' in an attempt to teach her how to beat them."

Hawk stared in disbelief at Johnson, "Jesus, Johnson, that's damn barbaric!" He couldn't even imagine someone strapping Shana down and injecting her with drugs just so she could experience it.

"No, Hawk, it's training. You know, as well as I do, that sometimes the military has to do unpleasant things for the greater good. If she proved unsuitable for it they would have discontinued it. As it was, though, she passed through it with flying colors."

Hawk shook his head disbelievingly, but decided to let it rest for now. "Any of my other people hiding anything they aren't telling me?"

"No, everyone else is exactly as you see them. Except Snake Eyes, but even I don't know everything about him. So Hawk, out of every person currently on your base, Shana is the best-equipped soldier you have to beat that narco-interrogation." He held up a hand before Hawk could say anything else. "That doesn't mean I'm not worried, all right? I want to get her back as much as you do. No one is proof against the absolute worst that man can devise, so it's in all of our best interests to get her back as soon as we can. I'll have a word with the CIA and FBI and we'll see what we can do. I'll warn you they may want to come and talk to you so prepare your people for some unpleasant questions about how they were separated in the jungle and what exactly happened."

"I'll prep my people." Hawk said grimly as Johnson signed off.


	2. Chapter 26: Interview

**Chapter 26: Interview**

Snake Eyes wasn't in his room.

He wasn't in the dojo, which was the next place Hawk had thought that the ninja master would most likely have gone. He wasn't in the gym, or the rec room, the kitchen, or the pool where they set up water training exercises.

Finally, frustrated, he asked Allie if she'd seen where he went to. And got the last answer he'd expected, but the first one he should have thought of. "He's in Shana's room. Hasn't left since he went there yesterday morning to unpack her things."

And there was where he found Snake Eyes. Curled up silently on Shana's bed, back to the door, apparently oblivious to the world, lost in his own pain. Seeing him like that, alone in the bed that he'd shared with Shana more nights that Hawk knew (or wanted to know), made Hawk realize just how lost Snake Eyes was without Shana.

He'd been one of the old-fashioned military types, didn't really see a need for women in the military, didn't really approve. But when General Flagg had said to Hawk, "I got this woman you have to meet," Hawk had been floored. Watching her in action had proved an eye-opener; she was easily better than most men he'd ever seen, and he even thought she'd be the equal of Snake Eyes, who was the best martial artist Hawk had ever seen. He'd heard about her bout with Snake Eyes in the gym after extended hand-to-hand combat sessions with the other guys, all of whom she'd beaten handily. Hawk still couldn't make up his mind whether Snake Eyes had deliberately let her win or if she really had beaten him; neither Shana nor Snake Eyes had ever told him—or, he suspected, would ever tell him.

It wasn't until months later that he realized they had begun a physical relationship. Furious, he'd called them both into his office and chewed them out. Shana had heard him out, then quietly and precisely dropped her bombshell; if he was so certain that their seeing each other was going to disrupt their working relationship, then how come it hadn't already? That led to the discovery that Shana and Snake Eyes had been seeing each other—had, indeed, been sneaking into Shana's quarters—on a regular basis for half a year! And he'd never known. It also turned up the fact that Shana and Duke had a prior relationship too.

Faced with that knowledge, he'd had no choice but to give in as gracefully as he could and try to save face. When, a short time later, he added Allie to the team as his Staff Sergeant and linguistics expert, and saw Dashiell Faireborn, of all people—Mr. By-The-Book himself—sneaking into Allie's quarters shortly thereafter, he threw up his hands and resigned himself to the fact that his base was going to turn into a badly-written soap opera with The Girls breaking up with men and getting together with others.

And it hadn't happened like that, despite his fatalistic viewpoint that Shana would eventually get tired of Snake Eyes and move on—she was, after all, the complete opposite of him; outgoing where he was withdrawn, cheerful when he was gloomy, sunshine to his shadow. Clayton had looked at them and thought, 'It'll never last.'

Ten years later, his only thought was when they were going to get married. Because there was no question that they would eventually, just as he was certain Allie and Dash were, at some point, going to get married. Despite their showy, passionate arguments that had first been the talk of base but were now accepted by everyone as routine, there was a quiet core of compatibility and love between his pragmatic, stiff, inflexible Warrant Officer and his passionate, gregarious, language-talented Staff Sergeant; and as for Shana and Snake Eyes—Hawk had long since given up wondering how it worked, or why it did when they were such opposites_. Just be glad it does work,_ he'd told himself, and never had reason to regret it, not even after the accident that took Snake Eyes' voice and face but had never taken Shana's heart from him.

Now he looked at Snake Eyes, alone in the middle of Shana's room; her presence was all around them, all the more heartbreaking because she herself wasn't, and Clayton had been haunted all night wondering where she was, what was happening to her, how she was doing. And he knew, without having to ask, that Snake Eyes had spent a similarly sleepless night.

He sat down in Shana's desk chair and regarded Snake Eyes' stiff back for a moment. "I didn't get any sleep last night either," he said, knowing Snake Eyes could hear him and was paying attention even if it didn't look like it outwardly. "I keep wondering where she is right now, what's happening to her, and the thought of all the possibilities makes me want to shout and throw things or shoot something. But in the end, it's not going to help bring her back." He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. "I had a talk with Johnson yesterday. He clued me in on a few things I didn't even know—and I wasn't sure if you did, either; Shana's very good at keeping things secret, so I thought I'd share them with you."

Snake Eyes rolled over on the bed and pinned Hawk with an unwavering gaze; Hawk started steadily back. "Johnson said out of all the people here on base, Shana is probably the best-equipped to deal with drug-assisted interrogation. Her classified secondary MOS—and I'll warn you this must go no further than the two of us—is kinesic interrogation."

Snake Eyes' eyes widened. So he hadn't known; Shana was very, very good at keeping secrets. "It made a lot of sense, once he pointed it out to me. How she seems to read minds, how she seems to know what you're thinking before you say anything…but along with her natural talents in kinesics, she also received an FBI-sponsored course in narcointerrogation resistance training."

Snake Eyes sat bolt upright in bed, staring. Hawk winced, but nodded. "I told Johnson the same thing; the thought of our military strapping Shana down to a bed and injecting her with drugs makes me uncomfortable, too. Damn barbaric is what I told Johnson. But she not only survived it, she passed it with flying colors. He told me she's well-equipped to handle narcointerrogation."

Silence for a moment. Snake Eyes was looking at Clayton with a half-distracted air; Clayton had just given him a lot of information about Shana that he hadn't known before, and he was trying to process it all.

"Think later, Snake Eyes. I came here to tell you that the FBI are going to be here in a little bit to run through the details of the mission with you, to debrief you on what happened on this mission. Johnson said they'll spearhead the search for her; it's only fair since she was one of their operatives." He saw Snake Eyes' shocked look for the second time, and grinned crookedly as he stood. "Yeah, that particular little secret took me by surprise too. I didn't know that she was technically FBI, on loan to me. I would have probably been a lot more careful which missions I sent her on!" He opened Shana's room door, held it open. "Come on. As much as you'd like to hide in here, and as much as I like having you hide in here—I haven't seen a recruit run past me white-faced with terror since you left—you are going to have to talk to the FBI since you were the last one to see Shana alive. Cam said she's been learning AMESLAN from Shana, and I've noticed she's also pretty good at reading body language, so she'll be sitting in there with you. Go on, now." As Snake Eyes started to reluctantly head down the hall toward the administrative levels and the conference rooms, Hawk called after him. "Snake Eyes?"

The black-clad ninja master paused, looked back at Hawk.

"I'm not going to say anything if you want to sleep in her room. I promise."

It was hard to tell under the black balaclava, but Hawk would have sworn Snake Eyes smiled just a moment before he headed down the hallway.

Cam looked up as the conference room door opened, and smiled wanly. "Come in. Have a seat. Jammer said they're on the way down; Duke's bringing them." As he came in and took a seat, she closed her eyes and took a few deep, calming breaths, then opened her eyes to see Snake Eyes' looking curiously at her and smiled. "Little mind-clearing calming trick. I had a feeling I was going to need it so I ran through some meditation exercises before I came."

_Meditation?_

She touched the pentagram hanging around her neck. He nodded in understanding as the door opened and Duke came in with not just one man wearing a black suit that screamed FBI, but also three other men wearing black paramilitary uniforms with DHS on it. A moment later as the door opened again and Hawk walked through it, he frowned at the Homeland Security uniforms. "Why are you here? I thought the FBI was going to handle Shana's case since she was FBI."

"We've had our eye on Ms. O'Hara for some time now," said one of the DHS suits. "With her combination of skills, talents, and training, and the freedom and latitude she has to move freely about the country under the guise of classified military operation—and her freedom to move around outside of it—she's been under scrutiny for some time."

"Why? Think she's going to go postal and blow us all up?" Cam's words were sarcastic.

The DHS suit, however, didn't seem to notice. "That's what we're afraid of. And this, her suddenly going missing, proves that she shouldn't have been allowed to go on international missions."

"Excuse me. I resent your implication that I cannot trust _Master Sergeant_ O'Hara." Hawk stressed her rank. "She has never been less than completely dedicated to her country, her career, and her team here and I would unhesitatingly place my life in her hands. And so would anyone else on this base."

The DHS suit rolled his eyes in barely-contained annoyance. "Well then, let's hope your faith won't be misplaced. Let's get down to business. How do you know that Master Sergeant O'Hara hasn't defected, rather than been captured, as you said?"

Hawk's jaw dropped. "Defect? _Defect_? Where the hell would she defect _to_, in the middle of the damn jungle? For that matter, _who _the hell would she defect to?"

"Some of the arms confiscated from the rogues in the Congolese and Rwandan jungles match arms smuggled out of Ireland and sold to African militants. It's not too much of a stretch that O'Hara would use this fortuitous turn of events to defect to the side of the Irish rebels. With her skills and talents and training, she could be a valuable asset to them in training their new recruits. According to her file, she speaks both English and Gaelic fluently and is proud of her Irish Catholic heritage."

"And I am proud of my Native American heritage. It does not mean I am going to pick up a tomahawk and go on the warpath counting coup!" Cam spoke for the first time, and her eyes flashed angrily. "Although I am considering finding out what your head looks like under your hair—but since you're wearing a toupee, it wouldn't count by my tribe's standards."

If Hawk hadn't been so furious, he would have burst out laughing; the DHS suit put a hand up to his head, and the slight movement of his 'scalp' as he touched it told Hawk that Cam was right; he was wearing a toupee. Duke's lips twitched, and Hawk was sure that was a smile under Snake Eyes black mask; his eyes betrayed amusement.

Time to put an end to this. "You're supposed to be here getting clues to help me find a missing person, a dear friend and a good soldier. But the way you act, it's like you're expecting to put out a warrant for a criminal."

"We may need to if we cannot ascertain whether she was indeed captured or if she went voluntarily on her own, defecting to an as-yet-unknown side."

"She. Did. Not. Go. Willingly." Hawk stood, and the flat, dangerous edge to his voice drew all of their attention.

Cam stood—and Hawk had known Cam had a temper, but he'd never seen it—until now. Her eyes were hard and her voice low and dangerous. "We were on a bridge in the middle of the jungle. It was pouring rain and there were pursuers. In order to save us and the children we were trying to rescue, Shana and Snake Eyes here cut the ropes that held the bridge together. The wood and ropes were wet, and they both fell. They were washed a considerable distance downstream, lost each other in the rapids, and when Snake Eyes finally managed to get out of the water, he was in time to see them drag Shana out of the water on the opposite side of the river, throw her in the back of a jeep, and drive off with her. We picked up her trail in Kinshasa, aided by intel that said they would have taken anyone the human traffickers captured to an abandoned hospital there, to be sorted and classified according to her expected market price and then shipped to the next closest port at which they thought they could get a good price. Since she was picked up in Africa, but she's too distinctive to be sold there, the next closest port of call at which they could get a decent price for her would be Amsterdam. You'll find her at the slave market in Amsterdam."

The DHS suit gave her his full attention. "Seems like you know a lot about human trafficking."

"I know stuff. Now stop asking stupid questions and go find Shana!"

One of the other guys in Homeland Security uniform stirred and spoke for the first time that interview. "You're Cameron Arlington. Daughter of Frederick Arlington, at Osan AFB."

"Yes."

"You're the illegal. You were in ICE holding here at Sealview for a while before we transferred you to New Mexico."

A hiss—and now Cam was truly angry; her eyes were hard dark stones and the sharpness in her voice could have cut metal. "I was only illegal because someone made false accusations. I'm a citizen, I've always been a citizen, my father was Native American and you need to _get the hell off my back_!"

"Watch your mouth, you know we can still revoke your citizenship and have you deported anyway if we want to. All we have to do is lose a piece of paper and declare you undocumented." The DHS people were no longer even bothering to be polite, and Hawk decided that was enough for him.

"You will do no such thing. Cam Arlington is my soldier, a trusted member of my team, and her citizenship is a matter of record. So, for that matter, are the DNA results that prove she is Frederick Arlington's daughter. If you happen to lose an item of her paperwork, I have a certified copy of each item in her folder, plus those DNA results, and so does the medicine woman of her Iroquois tribe in Western New York. Now, if all you can do is stand here and insult my team, then you don't need to be here to do that. Duke, if you would see our guests get off the base…" Duke nodded, and Hawk opened the door, gestured Cam and Snake Eyes through it, and then closed it behind them.

And leaned against the wall and blew out a breath. "Whew. Glad that's over." He looked at Cam, saw her face frozen. "What's wrong? Don't let those stupid comments get to you."

"No, I didn't…I mean…" she looked at him with a mix of hope and fear in her eyes. "Dad…really was my Dad?"

_Oh my God. How did we neglect to tell her the results of the DNA test? _"Yes. Do you remember Alex taking a cheek swab while you were at Sealview?"

"Y-yes."

"She didn't have any of your father's DNA to compare it with, and no living relatives, but Jennifer Aiennatha volunteered a blood sample and the Native American markers came up. While there's no definitive proof that Frederick Arlington was indeed your father, your DNA has a ninety-two percent match to Jennifer's. It's enough to prove a Native American heritage. So since Frederick Arlington was the only personnel at Osan with Native American heritage, it is very likely he was indeed your father."

"He…was…" there were tears on her cheeks; she scrubbed at them with one hand, but more kept coming. "I worried—if I wasn't perfect he'd abandon me like my mother had—but he was my father."

"Yes, he was." Hawk looked up, saw Charlie coming, frowning at the sight of Cam emotionally upset. He stepped forward quickly, intercepted Charlie. "In all the stuff going on, we never told Cam the results of the DNA test. I just mentioned casually that Frederick Arlington was indeed her biological father. I didn't realize she hadn't known, and I didn't mean for her to get so upset."

"She'll be fine. She's just in shock." Charlie stepped past Hawk, went to Cam. She looked up at him, then threw her arms around him. Hawk said something incoherent and fled; Snake Eyes just slipped quietly away.


	3. Chapter 27: Alone

**Chapter 27: Alone**

He couldn't stand being around them.

It wasn't that he was angry with them, or upset. It was that they all seemed like they were going about their everyday business with what seemed like normalcy, when for him the world had stopped revolving, stopped moving.

He simply didn't know what to do without her anymore. It had never hit him, while she was there, just how much of a role she played in his life. While there had been the inevitable times when duty drew them apart, they had spent almost all their spare time off-duty and as much of their time on duty as they could together. She was his voice, he was her silence. She was his life, and without her he didn't know how to live anymore. With her not by his side, the world suddenly seemed…empty.

When he walked into a room he missed her cheery voice saying hi to everyone. Before, he'd barely had to lift a finger to sign anything; she knew what he wanted almost instinctively and would ask for it for him—or get it for him herself. Now he found himself having to put his meal tray down in the mess to sign his choices to the servers; had to put his tray down in order to ask if a seat was taken. Had to sign his name to the base mail clerk so that he could get his mail, which, after the first week back, he didn't bother to get.

His own quarters suddenly seemed very spare, Spartan; foreign and alien. He hadn't even spent a lot of time in it; he'd spent as many of his nights as possible with her, in her room; talking with her, spending time with her, learning from her, loving her. Not just physically; lovemaking had been, while not necessary to their relationship, a part of their fun together and he missed her so fiercely he ached for her. But the stash of communal porn that made the rounds of the guys didn't hold any appeal for him; he didn't want anyone but Shana.

He spent most of his time in Shana's quarters, keeping things dusted and tidy, looking over her things almost obsessively to see that everything was in place and kept the way she liked it. Her presence here was strong, an aura of 'I just left for a minute, I'll be right back.' He'd found an unfinished letter on her desk, addressed to one of her brothers; the page didn't have more than Sean's name and a 'how are you doing' on it, but he left it exactly where it was, vowing to himself that he would bring her home to finish that letter.

He took his time unpacking her things, taking out soiled items and sending them to laundry, hanging clean clothes in her closet and putting things in her drawer. When there was nothing else left for him to do, he lay in bed and thought about her. He closed his eyes and remembered her smile, her laugh, the feel of her long red hair gently brushing his skin as they curled up next to each other. He remembered her silky skin sliding under his hands; tasted over and over again the slight salty tang of her skin when he licked and kissed and nuzzled her in bed; he even tried to pull out the calendar each one of The Girls had given Their Guys once after having lost a bet with them; but the sight of her posing for him on the pages of the calendar almost made him ill as he imagined her forced to pose for some nameless faceless human trafficker in the same way, and that was the last time he pulled that out from under his mattress.

He spent a lot of time flipping through the photo albums he'd painstakingly created of both of them over the years; having lost his family, and his twin sister Theresa, in a car crash when they'd been on their way to pick him up from the airport one day, he'd gotten a sense of just how precious life was, how fleeting, and he'd taken up photography as a way of capturing every fleeting moment. He dug out all of those photo albums, now; Shana was his favorite subject to photograph. Not only when she was aware of it and actively posing for him; his favorite photos were those where he'd caught her off-guard and unaware, when she wasn't Scarlett but just simply Shana. The most recent shot was of her, dancing on the floor at Europa with Alex. And the next shot, which was his new favorite set of pictures—screen clips from her stunt, dancing on the floor at Medellin's Club Mangos with Alex and Courtney. It was odd; although none of the three ever took their clothes off, it was one of the most erotic videos he'd ever seen of her.

Shana at Coney Island once when they'd had a three-day pass; Shana in front of the 9/11 memorial; Shana on a Ferris Wheel, her face alight with laughter. Lots and lots and lots of pictures of Shana at his cabin in the mountains—not his only, but hers too. When they'd made renovations to the original structure (another album full of photos) his intent was to build a place that would be truly their own, and certain design elements were as much her idea as his. There was one little detail that he'd never consciously thought a lot about, and now did; her name wasn't on the deed.

He would correct that at the very first opportunity he had.

More pictures, filling other albums; he had a whole library of them, after having spent ten years by her side. Shana curled up asleep on the couch in front of the fireplace one evening, having read herself to sleep as he'd been down in town picking up supplies. Shana in tank top and panties, cooking on the stove early one morning before she'd even brushed her hair. It was that Shana that he loved the most; the one who was just being herself, not the Shana that was who her training had made of her.

Her training.

That had startled him, when Hawk told him about Shana's classified secondary MOS. Shana was one of the most open people he'd ever met; what you saw of her was what you got. She was an open book. You could ask her practically anything and she would give you an answer—and she was truthful, too. She didn't try to sugarcoat anything, hide anything.

And yet, for all her openness she wore an air of mystery. While Snake Eyes had known her for years, even he had never found out what her secondary MOS was. He'd heard the story; she'd had a gun in her hand when Clayton asked her about her MOS, and she'd spun so fast that the slug had buried itself in the concrete wall behind him. Clayton said later only half-jokingly that she could have killed him and he wouldn't have known it. And despite his joking, Snake Eyes could see Shana doing just that. He'd never known about the narcointerrogation.

He'd now found out not only what her secondary MOS was, but how she'd gotten it. He agreed completely with Hawk; it was barbaric and he couldn't imagine how Shana had gotten through it, but at the same time he was fiercely proud of her, of her grit and determination and willingness to take the hard road in order to be better, to do better, to be exceptional and stand out against everyone around her.

He spent his nights sleeping in her bed; the pillow, gently scented with the fragrance of the shampoo she used in her hair (peaches, like the peach trees in her beloved Georgia) soothed him; when he slept he felt like he was right there, that she was next to him and all he had to do was reach out and touch her. Her presence here in her quarters was strong and he felt closer to her here. He couldn't sleep in his room, couldn't sleep alone; he'd forgotten how to function without Shana. And his heart ached. _When you get back I'm going to marry you so we'll never ever have to be apart again_, he vowed fiercely to himself each night he curled up under her sheets, head on her pillow, breathing in the fragrance of her hair and desperate for the comfort all of that offered him.

What kept him going, when otherwise he'd give up, was the dreams. If he was thinking of her right before he fell asleep, sometimes he would feel…a vague something, a set of impressions; sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker. He didn't know what to make of those; he knew that there were stories of twins who could feel the other get hurt even with miles between them, but he'd never heard of it happening to two people not related by blood but held together by bonds of love. However, disregarding the scientific evidence, he started to believe (although a small part of his mind told him it was probably wishful thinking) that those impressions he was getting actually were from Shana, and while they didn't offer concrete images, those impressions proved she was still alive.

She was alive; but her mind was fogged, as if by drugs; and she was in a lot of pain. Snake Eyes woke up from a nightmare one night and biting down on his lip to keep from screaming at the pain that sizzled down the nerves of his arm; a confusing, somehow alien pain; only as he regained full consciousness did he realize that if that impression of pain had come from Shana, then this likely was what forcibly being injected with drugs felt like. Could Shana—his strong, beautiful, tough, wonderful Shana—survive this?

She tried so, so hard not to scream as she swam up through fuzzy layers of unconsciousness to agonizing awareness. Her entire body was a complete mass of agony; there wasn't a part of her that didn't hurt. From her fingers and toes, numb from the shackles clamped too tightly around her wrists and ankles; the shackles themselves, cutting off circulation at the same time they were rubbing her skin raw from her almost constant movement. Muscle aches from that same constant movement as she thrashed in drug-induced hallucinations and delirium.

She'd lost all track of time; she couldn't keep track of days between the drugs and the constant darkness; her world had narrowed to this cargo container, the filthy stained boards under her. The drugs left her with a mouth so dry that she could barely croak; that in turn led her to gulp water thirstily whenever it was offered, and while she knew that the water was laced with more of the drugs, she needed that water so badly that she ignored it. She was never allowed up, her arms and legs never released. Not once. She was stiff and sore from lying in one spot, one position; her shoulders were raw and she was sure she had splinters in them from the rough wooden floor of the cargo container.

The only mercy was that the drugs helped alleviate her pain.

But if the men were cruel, the women were not. Two of the taller women, although Shana didn't know their names, seemed to have taken pity on her, and while a portion of Shana's mind was humiliated at the fact that they pitied her, another part of her mind welcomed the fact that they did. Although they didn't have the keys to her shackles, they would stretch out at the very limits of their own shackles and be able to reach her that way with a bit of tattered cloth and tried to massage cramps out of her arms and legs when her muscles locked and spasmed painfully from being stretched for so long. Whenever they could save a little water, they would stretch across the floor to her when the slavers were gone and tilt the fetid but mercifully drug-free water into her cracked, swollen lips; while they were fed three times a day Shana would have a tube shoved down her throat once a day and have tepid, thick mush poured down that tube into her stomach, and half of that she would lose when the tube was pulled back out of her stomach and she vomited when it hit the back of her throat. The women would clean her face and give her small bites of whatever they had left when the men were gone.

She slowly came to realize that while they pitied her, they also admired her. For most of them, their resistance had been broken before they even came on this cargo vessel; orders given them by the slavers were obeyed instantly, fearing punishment. The one time they took the gag out of Shana's mouth intending to force her to do the same she screamed as loudly as she could, and she surmised, when they stuffed the gag hastily back into her mouth and fled, that there were other people on this vessel, people who didn't know what cargo those container held. And they never tried it again.

Waking reality was unbearable; drugged semi-consciousness was a little better. Sometimes, even when withdrawal pain was the worst, she could almost feel him in her dreams; almost feel him reaching for her, see the love and anguish and haunted fear in his eyes. Over and over her mind replayed the last words she'd heard him say to her; _I will never stop looking for you, hold on!_ And again and again she promised, sobbing his name in her dreams, her arms unable to reach for him but her heart and mind and soul yearning for him. She would try to talk to him, but she couldn't make any sound, and all she could do was read her name, shaped by his lips, over and over. _Shana, Shana, Shana…_

He was the first one she thought of when she woke, the last thought she had before going to sleep, and in between he haunted her dreams, so close to her yet so far away. But she could still feel him yearning for her, and each time she closed her eyes, she affirmed, _I'll hold on for you…please, please find me, please…_


	4. Chapter 28: Empty

**Chapter 28: Empty**

BANG!

Wayne Sneedon winced at the sound and peeked cautiously around the door of the garage.

He hadn't meant to stop here; he was intending to go to Shana's quarters, see if he could get Snake Eyes to come to the rec room, where the Joes were doing their annual Christmas tree decorating, rather belatedly. Usually they did this the first week of December, but this time with a third of Joe base on the Congo mission, they'd decided to hold off until the team was back. Now they were, and decorating for the holiday was underway even if there was a noticeable gap in the arrangements.

He hadn't realized just how much Shana did around base, particularly around the holidays. At this time last year, she'd been singing Christmas carols in the rec room, as she decked the room in evergreen garlands, hung mistletoe over the rec room door (and roped Snake eyes into helping her so she could sneak a quick kiss under it) and giving everyone helpful suggestions on what to get certain Joes. He swore she carried a directory in her head as to what hobbies each Joe favored, memorized even the most offhand remark about what this person wanted and passed that information along. For the guys, it was invaluable; Flint went to Shana to find out what to get Allie for Christmas (He wasn't much of a shopper) and even Wayne had taken advantage of Shana's memory early; Shana had suggested he get Courtney another Swiss Army knife after learning that the blade had snapped on the one she had (which he'd also bought her) a couple years back.

But he'd heard the thumping, banging and clanging, albeit muffled, through the door of the garage, and although he had a pretty good idea what was happening (and who was responsible!) he decided to jump feet first into the emotional storm brewing in that garage.

He stepped into the garage and closed the door behind him.

The first thing he saw was the old '65 Mustang sitting in the middle of the floor. The car was a rust-colored primer red, though he had an idea that at one time it had probably been a gleaming bright candy-apple red. There were spots of rust along the body, but nothing major, and all the trim and emblems were there.

The next thing he saw was the engine hanging off an engine hoist a foot above the open hood of the car. He wasn't much of a car guy, but even he could tell the engine was in pretty good shape for being in a car that old. Oh, there was the usual grease spots and smears and inevitable wear and tear, but it still looked like it was in remarkably good shape.

The last thing he saw was the long legs of his favorite girl in the world.

Courtney was draped over the front bumper of the car; up on her tiptoes so she could stretch forward and reach into the engine compartment, and it pushed her butt even higher in the air and made Wayne think things that were very un-soldierlike. He cleared his throat to chase those mental pictures out of his head (it didn't help at all) then stared at the engine hanging above the car instead of the two round, firm butt cheeks (that helped a little). "Hey, Court."

She jerked upright in surprise and startlement, then yelped as she took a couple steps back from the car and the back of her head impacted the hanging engine so hard that involuntary tears sprang to her eyes. "Oh…owwww…"

"Oh jeez, Court, I'm so sorry!" He was half-laughing as he wrapped his arms around her and rubbed the back of her head to ease the smart from the impact. "I didn't mean to startle you like that."

"It's…okay…I wasn't really paying attention to what was going on around me." She leaned against him for a quick moment, rubbed the back of her head, then pushed him away. "Get out of here."

He would have gone, but something in her voice, the set of her shoulders, the way she moved, stopped him. He'd known her for too long not to see the tension in her shoulders, the tilt of her head; when she was worried or thinking hard about something, the vehicles in the garage tended to mysteriously come apart, and he guess that this car—wherever it had come from—was Court's latest victim. "This car's new. Where did we get it?"

"We didn't get it. Alex did." Court sighed wearily, grabbed a grimy shop towel, and scrubbed at the grease smears on her fingers. "Since she came back from the Congo that first time and saw Liv's blue Mustang," Courtney waved a hand at the opposite side of the garage, where a royal blue '65 Mustang, identical to the one Courtney was working on except color and condition, reposed, "And she's been wanting one ever since. Liv has vanity plates on it that read 'Alex'," and Wayne had to laugh as he saw the plates Courtney was talking about, "Alex wanted a matching Mustang that has Olivia's name on it and she finally found this one within her price range and in decent condition, and I offered to do the work on it." A slight smile. "I loved working on Liv's 'Stang. This one's not in as good shape, but that makes it challenging."

"And it's also a way to work through whatever's bothering you." He saw her look. "It's Shana."

She looked like she was going to deny it for a moment, then she folded her arms and leaned back against the side of the car. "Yeah. It's just…She's my commanding officer, she's the most capable of all of us, and her bonds with us are the strongest. This morning I started to throw all my clothes in the laundry and I swear I heard Shana tell me just before I tipped the basket into the chute, 'Corporal Krieger, make sure to take out any clothes that have motor oil and grease on it so it doesn't contaminate everyone else's clothes!' She scrubbed at her eyes. "I swear it was like she was actually standing there and talking to me. I turned around almost expecting to see her standing there, and when I turned and she wasn't, it felt so…empty. I'm so used to seeing her here that I can't imagine this base without her." Her lower lip trembled, a movement that Wayne would normally have found sexy as hell but right now just looked vulnerable and sad. "I was on the extraction team that went out to Entebbe to get Flint's group out the last time we went to the Congo. I saw what…what Alex looked like…when we picked her up. It was so horrible. I couldn't even think at first, just reacted and then cried on your shoulder later." Wayne nodded.

"And now I keep remember I what Alex looked like, and oh God…I will die if Shana comes back looking like that, Wayne, I swear I will! If something like that could happen to her and she doesn't survive or doesn't recover, how will…how can…" She couldn't speak, now; her tears streamed down her face, and Wayne wrapped his arms around her, folding her into a big hug.

"I want her back! I want everything to be normal! I want all of this to have never happened. I want...I want…" she trailed off into sobs.

He stepped close to her, tucking her head under his chin and holding her, feeling her shoulders shake under his hands. "Ah, Court," he said quietly. "I can't promise you that Shana will come back. We're all military here and we know that the possibility is always there that we won't come back from a mission. That this one will be the last one. And the chances are there too that we'll be hurt, be too badly injured to recover from, that we'll have to take a military discharge." Her shoulders shook even harder. "But what I can promise you is that if she does come back, she'll have the best of care we can give her, the best friends anyone could ever have helping her get better. And you'll be among them."

"Yes." Courtney had stopped crying and was leaning against him, enjoying being close, drawing comfort from him. "She'll have whatever she needs to recover. And she'll be fine."

Wayne smiled. "There's my girl." He held her at arm's length, checked her over. "Now dry your eyes and come on, We're decorating the rec room for Christmas and if you have any gifts Allie wants you to put them under the tree now."

"I'm going!" Courtney grinned as she dashed away the last of the tears. "Thanks Wayne!" And she was gone.

Allie finished tacking up the last of the mistletoe over top of the rec room doorway and turned to Dash, standing in front of her holding the opposite side of the ladder she was on. Normally this was Shana's prerogative; she wasn't at all afraid of heights, not like Allie was, although she did usually enlist Snake Eyes' help. Though Allie suspected she got him to help more because they just did everything together and because Snake Eyes would take the opportunity to turn it into a foreplay session.

Which reminded her—Dash had been staring at her chest a little too long. She grinned as she leaned over. "Dash."

No answer.

"Dash!"

With difficulty he dragged his mind—and his eyes—up from her chest where they'd been a moment ago, and as soon as she saw his face she realized he hadn't been thinking what she thought he was thinking. His eyes were full of guilt and anguish and pain.

The burden of command. She didn't need to have Shana's mindreading skills to know what he was thinking. "We'll get her back, Dash. It'll be okay."

"Is it?" His voice was soft as he spoke. "Allie, you saw what Alex looked like when you rescued us from Zimurinda's camp back in the Congo this summer. After seeing her and what she looked like, can you honestly tell me that Shana's going to be completely okay?"

Allie got down off the ladder and leaned against him, slipping an arm around his waist. "Dash, I could tell you that she's going to be completely okay. I can tell you she'll be fine, that it will all be fine, that she'll come back and everything will be completely normal. The problem is that it won't be true. We all know, every time we go out on a mission, that this time, this could be the one, the one we won't come back from. But we still go out anyway because this is our job, this is what we were trained to do, this is what we're good at, and because we're the best there is at this job, there is no one else who will do what we do. So yes, I could tell you everything's going to be okay but you and I will both know it's an empty promise, that neither one of us can make promises like that. But we are going to do everything we can to bring her back, and if she gets back we are going to do everything in our power, everything we are individually and collectively capable of doing, to make sure that she does get back to a hundred percent. And even…"she swallowed hard, her voice dropping. "Dash, even if she doesn't, even if she never is exactly like she was before, she's still our Shana and we'll deal with it."

He looked at her, but some of the tight worry lines around his mouth, the frown lines at the corners, began to ease. "You're right. How do you always know the right things to say to make me feel better?"

"Because I know you, Dashiell Faireborn. We've been together for so long that while I may not have Shana's mindreading abilities, I still can read you."

"Speaking of mindreading…" he took a quick, furtive look around him, then leaned in and lowered his voice. "Did Clayton talk to you yet?"

"He hasn't said anything to me yet. Is it about the mission?"

"Um. Sort of." He took another quick look around. "He had a talk with Johnson and Johnson told him what Shana's secondary military specialty was. Hawk gave me to understand that he was only told because it has direct ramifications on how this turns out. She's an intelligence analyst, specializing in kinesic interrogation."

Allie's eyes flew open. "That's how she somehow always knew when the people we shook down were lying! We would think they were cooperating, and Shana would shake them down, and they'd change their story!" Flint was nodding. "And how she always seems to know what you're thinking, and she'll answer a question almost before you ask it!"

"Yeah. Apparently the training she got at Quantico included kinesic interrogation, counterintelligence, and Hawk says that Johnson said Shana got training in narcointerrogation and narcointerrogation resistance." He saw the dawning realization in Allie's eyes. "Yeah, that's what I thought. It's…disconcerting—to think about them strapping Shana down to a table and deliberately injecting her with drugs so they can teach her not to talk while under them…but Allie, it's kind of like SERE training. We don't really like the idea of marching through the forest and being deprived of sleep and all the rest of it, but it does give us a taste of what it's like to be a POW."

"I understand it, I don't have to like it!" Allie snapped, then relented. "But she chose to do it, and it hasn't seemed to alter her personality anyway so it's not like any of us can say anything about it at this point." She sighed as she folded the ladder and stored it in the back of the rec room closet. "While we're talking about it...how is the rest of the team reacting? Besides Snake Eyes. I know he's been spending his time in Shana's room, and I also know Clayton's pretty much told him it's okay."

Dash sighed. "I've barely even seen him since we got back. Recondo, Brawler, Recoil, they pretty much keep to themselves. Alex, I think, is worried and guilty and upset but having Liv here on base so close to giving birth is definitely keeping her distracted. It's Cam I'm worried about."

"Come to think of it, I haven't seen much of her or Charlie since we got back."

"No, she's pretty much been staying in her room. I sent Ettienne to let her and Charlie know to put their presents under the tree, and I sent Stalker to get Snake eyes, so they should be coming along soon." He stopped talking as Courtney bounced into the room, Wayne close behind, both of them carrying an armful of packages.

"Snake Eyes?"

Snake Eyes spun as he heard the soft tap on the partially-open door of Shana's room. He stared to snap at whoever was disturbing his solitude, then but it back—barely—when he saw who it was.

"Um…" Stalker was plainly uneasy standing just inside Shana's room, facing a glowering Snake Eyes. "Snake, look, you don't have to guard Shana's stuff. I promise I won't touch a thing. I just came to tell you that if you and Shana had any presents to put under the tree in the Rec room, now's the time to do it. We held off decorating and setting up until the team got back from the Congo."

Snake Eyes nodded, folded his arms. After a moment, Stalker sighed, turned, and left.

Once he was gone Snake Eyes slowly turned to Shana's closet. When he'd unpacked her things, hung her clothes and put her boots back in her closet, he'd seen the glint of shiny silver paper in the depths; he hadn't had the heart to look. Holidays with Shana had always been so joyful; she made a game of hiding his presents all over the base where only he would find them, and he particularly remembered last Christmas; she'd left a note in his quarters late that night asking him to meet her in the dojo; and when he had he discovered her waiting with a huge red bow tied around her—and nothing else.

He'd had fun unwrapping that gift.

One by one he pulled the packages out. The sheer number of packages mystified him until he realized some of those packages were wrapped in red, green, silver and gold Christmas paper, and others wrapped in paper that said 'birthday' . The ones that had birthday printed on the paper also had tiny sticky notes stuck to them; 'Allie's birthday', said one. 'Courtney's birthday', said another. And four packages wrapped in baby blue paper that said 'it's a boy!' were marked 'Olivia and Auggie'. She'd already been shopping for all her friends.

Her thoughtfulness made a lump rise in his throat, and he had to swallow hard as tears threatened to overwhelm him. He sat there for a long moment, staring at the birthday packages, the baby packages, and the Christmas stuff. _She bought all this stuff for everyone. Allie's birthday isn't for months. Neither is Courtney's. No, I'm not going to give them to The Girls. Shana will give them herself when she gets back. _But he did take the four baby presents and added them to the armful he was lugging.

Allie took the presents without a word, but as she picked up the baby packages, the rec room grew silent. Everyone stared at the little boxes, which, by the feel of them, held blankets and baby clothes, and then Courtney gave a queer muffled sob and turned to bury her face in Wayne's shoulder.

"I think we'll wait on opening presents until Shana can join us." Allie's voice wasn't quite steady, and her eyes weren't quite dry. Another choked sob from the other side of the room had people looking in that direction, just in time to see Alex duck quickly out the door.

From the corner of the Rec Room closest to the TV, Cam folded her arms, and her voice had an edge to it that made her sound, for the moment, unlike herself. "I will not open anything until Shana's back."

"Neither will I," Olivia said quietly from where she was sitting on the couch, Clayton hovering behind her.

Hawk straightened up, "It's official. We'll hold off on the celebrations until Shana's back with us and can open her own." His eyes scanned the room. "Any objections?"

None.

"We're agreed then."

Cam fled the room, followed closely by Charlie.


	5. Chapter 29: Plan

**Chapter 29: Plan**

"You okay?"

Cam held up a hand to stop Charlie from speaking and instead led the way to their quarters. She'd been spending a lot of time there when she wasn't on duty or training; the rest of the time had been spent in the 'Girlz Only' workout room, and Charlie hadn't interrupted, although he'd had a quiet word with Duke about Cam's mental state. She'd been very quiet, even for her; and while normally she would talk to Charlie when something bothered her, this time she'd been absolutely silent.

Duke had been sympathetic. Shana's disappearance had hit him hard too; but as third-in-command here at base, he hadn't had the luxury of giving in to his feelings; work still needed to be done, all the day-to-day minutia. Due to the current emergency, Clayton had pushed his leave back, although 'leave' was a laughable idea when he'd brought Liv to stay on base with them. There wasn't a single soldier here who would complain, not after the events of the summer. He was actually getting rather more sympathy from the rest of the guys than less; as Olivia's delivery date drew closer and her discomfort became more and more evident, Clayton's mind was a little less on minutia and rather more on the incipient birth of his son; which was only fair, after all.

And they were relieved at this turn of events; Allie had been very worried about Clayton's seeming indifference to the news that Liv was having his baby, worried enough that she'd had a quiet word with Psyche-Out about it. Psyche-Out had reassured Allie that it would change as the pregnancy progressed, and after Olivia had been tased at Sealview, Clayton's entire viewpoint had changed (much to Allie's relief.) Now Flint and Duke were splitting up the day-to-day minutia and trivialities of base life and duty between them, freeing Hawk to spend as much or as little time as he actually wanted with Olivia, and in the process giving Duke some experience so he could run a base of his own someday.

Cam didn't speak until Charlie was inside their room; at her nod, he closed the door and faced her squarely. Fingers laced tightly in her lap and avoiding his eyes (something she did when she wasn't sure Charlie was going to like what she said) she whispered, "Everyone here misses her so much. I miss her. We have to get her back, Charlie."

"The FBI and Homeland Security are doing everything they can, Cam."

"No they aren't. The DHS guy said they'd been watching Shana as a potential 'threat' to national security for some time now. Trust me, they aren't really putting in much of an effort into looking for her."

There was nothing Charlie could say to that; after hearing Cam's account of what had happened at that interview, and hearing the same story from Flint and Duke, he couldn't help agreeing with her."The Army has sent out alerts to Interpol, they've sent word to all the governments of all the West African nations to be on the lookout for her. You can't feel guilty about this, Cam, there's nothing more you can do to bring her home. At the moment there isn't anything anyone can do to bring her home."

"I've been thinking about that." Cam said slowly, staring at her clenched fingers. "You're not going to like this, but please hear me out, okay? Let me finish and then you can yell at me."

Charlie sat down in the chair across from the bed, rested his elbows on his knees, and composed himself. "All right. I promise I'll at least hear you out. What's your plan?"

"I want to go undercover to find her and get her out."

It was said in a rush, all her words tumbling out at once. Charlie had to take a minute to process that, sort out her words, and when he finally found the meaning under them, he stared at her in astonishment. "You're kidding."

"I told you you weren't going to like it."

"Forget about me not liking it, Cam, just how do you think you'll manage that?"

She took a deep breath. "Up at my house, there's that trunk of papers my aunt and uncle kept. The name of the man who owned the house they kept me captive in is in those papers, along with address and bank account information so my Aunt and Uncle could transfer procurement payments to him. He also arranged for a lot of the 'clients' to take a 'vacation' up at the cabin; officially it was listed as an exclusive upstate New York mountain retreat with all the right amenities for the discerning client—amenities being me." Charlie winced. "Olivia and Alex are law enforcement; I'm sure they could track him down using that name and address and bank account. Once they have him I can get him to set up a deal to 'sell' me to a slave owner, and I'll work my way through the slavery underground until I find her."

Charlie was staring at her with his mouth hanging open. She looked up at him, and she smiled crookedly even though her eyes were worried. "Close your mouth, sweetheart."

Charlie composed his thoughts. "All right. Assuming Alex and Liv can find him; then what? How do you get him to cooperate? Wouldn't he think you died in the fire?"

"No because the newspaper clipping Jennifer saved that told her who I was said that only two bodies were found. So he probably knows that I'm still out here somewhere; he probably thinks some client of his decided he wanted me all to himself and killed my Aunt and Uncle, burned the cabin to look like an accident, and ran away with me. He can't go to the police and report that his property—me—has been stolen, because then he'd be arrested for human trafficking and child prostitution. So he has no idea where I am at the moment."

"How would you get him to cooperate?"

"He's facing a lot of different charges for a lot of different things. But Alex feels guilty about Shana's disappearance; she thinks, and rightly, that if she hadn't insisted on going back to the Congo, this wouldn't have happened. I'm sure she can work out some sort of deal for him whereby she'll drop or reduce some charges in order to get him to help. Legal blackmail, in other words. I've read the newspaper stories about some of her court cases, she's done it before."

Charlie inspected the logic so far and had to conclude that he couldn't find any holes in it, damn her. "So he'll sell you into slavery? Cam—you barely survived it once. What makes you think you'll survive it again?"

"I'm not fifteen anymore, Charlie, and Shana's taught me a lot about self defense. If I have to I can physically threaten whoever buys me, force them to take me around until I hear something of Shana. If she isn't in the 'circle' I'm sold into, I'll have whoever owns me sell me to someone else—they'll be only too glad to—and go on to a different country, a different circle of slaveowners. And I'll keep doing that until I find her."

"It could take years."

Cam tilted her head. "I don't think so. Look at the facts, Charlie; Shana's going to be sold in Amsterdam; it's one of the largest slave markets in the world, and the one where people with the most money go to get quality slaves. Shana is a very 'good quality' slave, she's physically unique and she's a born fighter. Someone with a lot of money to burn will buy her for an astronomical sum in order to have the an unbeatable fight slave. Whoever buys her is going to be very rich; there are very few people in the world who have that kind of money plus the will to buy slaves. It's not going to be some movie star, they're too much in the public eye, and it would be very hard to hide that sort of thing from the paparazzi. It's going to be some business figure, an international; most likely to be an American, a European, maybe a Middle Eastern sheik, one of China's elite, or a Japanese business tycoon. In other words, the pool of possible buyers isn't as big as you'd think it might be."

"And once you find her, how will you get her out? Both of you are slaves."

"In the mission briefing—they found Alex in the middle of the Congolese jungle using an implanted tracer. I can wear one of those so you all will know where I am and can come and pick us up when I find her."

"And how will we know when you found her?"

"When the tracer stops moving. I won't stop working my way through Europe until I find her, and once I find her I'll stick to her. "

"And how will you do that?"

She spread her hands. "Charlie, look at me. I'm damaged. By slaver standards, I'm damaged meat and not worth much at all except as an appetizer to the main meal." She saw his incomprehension. "Look. For someone to be interested in Shana he—it'll have to be a male—is going to not only be interested in turning her into a sex or fight slave. And you and I both know Shana's going to fight that with everything she has in her. Her buyer won't dare hurt Shana because she's too valuable to scar. So he's going to need a slave who is already damaged, a slave who he can hurt as much as he wants in as many ways as he wants, in order to get Shana to cooperate with whatever he's asking her to do."

"Stop. Stop. I don't want to hear anymore. I got it." There were tears in Charlie's eyes, and his voice was rough with emotion. "Cam, think about this, please, okay? You've been hurt more than any one person should ever have to be. You've been a victim of more than your fair share of pain. Don't do this."

"Can you think of any other way to get Shana back?"

"Well…couldn't Allie and Duke use your trafficker to get in, and then go into the slave market intending to buy Shana? If they don't see her the first time they can keep going back until they do."

"The more times they come back to look without buying any slaves the more suspicious the slavers will get. Eventually they'll just kill the two of them outright and we'll still not be any closer to getting her back. Try again."

Cam looked steadily at him, and he stared at her for a moment, silently, then dropped his eyes. He'd been hearing people around base talking about wanting to go rescue Shana, but every suggestion had been improbable and impractical; everything, from Courtney wanting to go into Amsterdam, guns blazing, to Duke and Allie's quieter 'want to go in and have a look around.' There was no way either suggestion was going to work. The way Cam was talking, this might—it was a long shot and depended on a lot of if's, but if everything went the way Cam was planning, they could get Shana back.

"I don't like it," he said finally. "I really don't like it. But the more I think about it the harder it is for me to find holes in your logic."

"I don't like it either, Charlie," she said slowly, her eyes welling up with tears. "I really don't like it. I killed two people to get out of that life; I never, ever expected to go back into it. The thought…" she shuddered. "The thought of people hurting me like that again makes me want to throw up. I know perfectly well that the moment I reveal my purpose to my buyer I could very well be killed. But Shana is my best friend, Charlie, and I can't…I can't just abandon her. I have to try something. Anything. Even a long shot like this."

"I'm not going to talk you out of it?"  
She shook her head. "I've been thinking about it for two weeks, hoping it wouldn't become necessary, but we haven't heard anything and time is running out. Shana's not the kind who will endure captivity for long, Charlie, and on the flip side, a buyer is only going to put up with rebellion from a slave for so long. Shana will never stop fighting, you know that, and it will only be a matter of time before the buyer is going to either get impatient and try something drastic to break her—which will almost certainly hurt scar or permanently cripple her for life—or kill her outright for her defiance and we will never, ever know what happened to her." She swallowed. "Snake Eyes is already suffering so much from her not being here—I look at him and he is in so much pain it hurts just to see him. And I know what Shana's likely going through and I know that wherever she is she's hurting too. And if I can help, I want to."

Charlie looked her consideringly for a long time. In the short time they'd known each other (and the even shorter time since he'd married her) he knew how she could dig in her heels. He knew how stubborn she could be. And while that stubbornness could be damned irritating sometimes, it was a part of her, it was a large part of who she was, and she would probably not have survived her life without it. And he also knew that if he set himself against her on this, she would still go ahead and do it anyway; he could see the conviction in her eyes, the absolute certainty that she was right and she could do this.

"Come on," he said, standing. "Let's go see Clayton."

She stared at him, and this time it was her jaw dropping. "That's it? You're not going to fight me on it?"

"Do you want me to?" he saw the look on her face. "Cam, you already made up your mind about this. And you're stubborn. And even though I tried to poke holes all over your plan, I can't_. IF_ everything goes they way you said, we could get Shana back. It'll be a hefty price to you—"

"I'll pay that price."

"—I knew you'd say that. And as much as I hate the very thought of someone else touching you, hurting you, the fact that you've thought this through means there's not much I can do to stop you. So let's talk to Clayton."

"I want to talk to everyone. Clayton. Flint. Duke. Alex, Liv. Allie. Snake Eyes."

"All right. Let's call a meeting."

There was stunned silence in the conference room as Cam finished outlining her plan. For just a moment. Then the room exploded.

"There is no WAY—" Clayton.

"Absolutely NOT!" Dash.

"Cam, I know you miss Shana but—" Conrad.

"How can you even THINK—" Allie.

"Cam, you're asking me to cut a deal—" Alex.

"How do you know he's still alive—" Liv.

Snake Eyes was silent, not even signing. He seemed totally numb, impervious to the fussing going on around him, a shell of a person sitting there, no reaction, no movement. Like he wasn't even there anymore.

Clayton finally waved them all to silence. "Cam, I can't believe I'm saying this, but—honestly, I can't find any holes in your suggestion." Charlie had interrupted Cam once as she outlined her plan to the Joes, to tell them about the alternative he'd suggested to her plan—and what she'd said in response to that, and how he had concluded that, as much as the entire idea horrified him right down to the bone, he couldn't come up with any alternatives. As much as the very idea horrified all of them, it was the first—and only—feasible suggestion anyone had come up with so far to find Shana.

"It's not going to be easy. Not only for me, but for all of you." Cam let her eyes rove around the table, finally coming to rest on Snake Eyes as he sat, a silent, unmoving black-clad monolith, at the end of the table. Everyone else glanced at him, reflexively; his eyes were blank and he didn't acknowledge their concerned looks. He might as well not have been there. "But…for Shana's sake…and Snake Eyes…we have to try."

"I don't like it," Allie said, tears in her brown eyes as she looked at Cam. "Instead of losing one, we could lose both of you. I don't…I don't like it." But they could sense the reluctant acceptance in her voice, the inevitability.

"Let's backtrack for a moment."Clayton spoke firmly. "The success of this plan rides on a lot of if's. I say Cam goes and gets these ledgers and other documents she found; then Liv, if you can get one of your coworkers to search for this guy—as you said, we don't know if he's still alive, and if he isn't this whole thing could be moot. When you find him, then we'll see what he wants in exchange for help. He could decide not to help us, and without his help, we won't get into the slave market. If he wants some sort of legal consideration in exchange for the help, there's no guarantee that Alex is going to be able to talk her boss into doing whatever it is that he wants. Child prostitution and human trafficking are very serious charges and they may not be willing to cut him a deal. If they don't there's nothing we can do past that point and the plan is scrapped anyway.

"Alex, once you have the DA's approval—yea or nay—then let us know before you talk to that bottomfeeder and whatever sleazebag lawyer he gets. IF—and I'll stress the 'IF'—we get this far we can have another meeting at that time to determine if we actually want to go through with this. Hopefully by that time someone will have come up with something that won't involve such…personal sacrifices… or maybe international authorities will have found her and we'll have her back by them." His tone expressed hope; his eyes didn't. "In the meantime, I want everyone to think long and hard about this. Particularly you, Cam." His voice softened. "Think about it, very hard. You could die doing this and we could lose both of you. If everything goes according to this plan and you want to back out when we reconvene, I will be the first one to applaud the fact that you've come to your senses. Charlie," he said to the big Navajo. "Take her up to her cabin tomorrow and get those papers she wants. I'll give you a day pass to get up there. Stay the night up there if you want. I'll see both of you after Christmas." His eyes said, _just in case she never sees her home again._

Charlie nodded understandingly.


	6. Chapter 30: Preparations

**Chapter 30: Preparations**

The three hour ride northwest to the reservation and Cam's cottage was accomplished in near-complete silence. Cam was busy with her own thoughts, sitting silent and sober in the front passenger seat, watching the snow-covered scenery go by.

_Do I really want to do this?_ A tiny voice in the back of her mind said the answer was _no_. However, even louder and more persistent, the voice in the front of her mind whispered_, if this gets Shana back, then yes._

The germ of the idea had come back in the Congo when she'd told Flint that the only way to get in was to know someone who was already 'in'. And although she didn't know for certain if her trafficker was still alive, the chances were very good that he was, and that he had the knowledge required to get her into the international slave markets, particularly in Amsterdam.

While she'd never known about the existence of the journals and ledgers that her aunt and Uncle had kept, she'd known enough about the customers who came to see her to know they had money, that they could pay handsomely for the privilege of forcing her to do things that she didn't want to do, and in her discussions with the other slaves, she'd learned a lot about the ins and outs of the human trafficking trade. One of the 'customers'—she'd known him as David Biehl—had brought his slave with him, a girl whose name Cam had never known because she'd become a slave so young, so long ago, that she didn't even remember if she'd ever had a name other than Babydoll. Babydoll had been sold through the Amsterdam slave market twice, through two different owners; once at the age of twelve and again at seventeen. Cam, then sixteen herself, had been appalled at the things Babydoll had told her, but she'd remembered all of it, every last disgusting detail, though there had been times when she hadn't wanted to remember. Biehl had rented the 'exclusive mountain cabin retreat' for a week, taking full advantage of the 'amenities' available for the 'discerning traveler'. Babydoll hadn't known where she was from, or where she lived; she too was a prisoner, kept captive and unaware of her surroundings, drugged before they left David Biehl's residence and only awakened when she was in Cam's basement. Cam and Babydoll had been forced to do unspeakable things to each other, Master David watching and enjoying the whole thing, but he left the two slaves in the basement in locked dog cages when he got tired of playing with them and wanted to sleep before hurting them again, and in the intervening time, while he rested, they had talked. It never ceased to amaze Cam how owners really seemed to lose track of their slaves' humanity; to their minds, the slaves really were things, toys, dolls to be used and put back when they were done until you wanted them again. They never once grasped the fact that slaves were human, they looked, they listened, and they remembered.

Cam remembered.

And as much as she loathed the memory, the knowledge of how she'd gotten it, she was grateful that she could use the knowledge to help her friend. Shana was the first female 'best friend' Cam had ever had; from the moment that Shana had stepped on the mat with her in the Girls Only workout room, not scoffing at the untrained swordwork she practiced clumsily, but tried to learn how Cam moved so she could teach Cam how to swing a sword in harmony with how her body was already trained to move, Cam had felt a bond with her closer than the bond she felt with Allie, with Shana, with Alex and Liv. There was just something different there.

A lot of it had to do with the similarities between them. While outwardly there was little common ground, once you looked beneath the surface it was evident. Shana had grown up with a lot of expectations placed on her; her mother expected her to be the Perfect Southern Lady; Shana's father expected her to live up to her talent and potential at martial arts. While Shana enjoyed being a tomboy, her brothers had come to expect her to be the spoiled, adored tomboyish baby sister, and when she had developed a juvenile crush on one of her brothers' friends and wore a dress to a science fair that friend was supposed to be participating in, her brothers had reacted with merciless teasing and pointed jabs at her about 'switching to the other side'—meaning Shana's snobby, refined older sister Siobhan and their elegant, equally snobbish mother; and Shana, crushed at this reaction to her attempts to 'be herself' in front of her brothers, had never worn another dress in front of them again.

Cam had been driven to 'meet expectations' from an early age. As soon as she was old enough to understand that she wasn't like other children because she had a father and no mother, she had also learned, from the teasing aimed her way by the other children at base, that her mother had abandoned her because she was a mixed-race bastard. Young Cammie had swallowed the hurt and the pain that knowledge caused and pushed herself to be everything her father seemed to expect of her. While she was a natural at hunting, tracking and survival, was proud of her abilities and skills and talents, there had been many, many times during her childhood at Osan that she wished she was a little more like the other children at base and a little less a misfit; however, to her reasoning, it was more important for her to please her father than it was to please herself and fit in with everyone else, because if she didn't please him, he would abandon her too and she didn't know how she would survive if she were alone.

The one thing that no one could take from her was her grace and her ability to dance. This was the one area in which she surprised everyone, the one area in which no one expected anything from her except what she herself wanted. She excelled at this, as she did in everything else, but it was less a matter of doing so because she was expected to than it was that she wanted to. And it was in this one area in which she felt her father's pride and complete approval; she danced in all the base's talent shows and always won, she surprised her teachers and won approval from them as well, and it was the one aspect of her life that was completely uncomplicated.

And then her father had died.

Cam had been in a state of numb shock; her father, her life at base, the routine of getting up, going to the base school, dancing, homework, and bed was familiar, and she knew what to expect. Being told she could no longer live at Osan had brought a wave of fear; wherever she was sent, would she then have to conform to yet another series of expectations? The fear was confirmed when she met her Aunt and Uncle for the first time, and learned the whole new routine, the expectations placed on a ten year old in a huge metropolitan city like New York. Her habits, her mannerisms, everything about her didn't fit with the expectations that everyone had of a child, because she was so different from every child they'd ever known. While her teachers approved of her efforts in her studies and she came home with report cards that said 'exceeds expectations', she had never been able to get close to them, had never formed enough of an attachment to anyone that she felt she could confide in when her aunt started to slowly withdraw her from life at the dance school, from auditions, rehearsals, everything that mattered to Cam and was a source of pride for her. So it was impossible for her to come out of her withdrawal enough to talk to the tall, thin, ascetic but somehow kind male cop who took her away from her aunt and uncle after she came to school with bruises on her legs; impossible for her to tell him that she had failed in meeting her Aunt's expectations and been beaten. Since her father had never touched her before, she felt she had done something horribly, horribly wrong to deserve being beaten with a wooden yardstick, and she was embarrassed to admit that she didn't know why she'd been beaten, didn't know what she'd done to deserve the bruises. To her, it was a failure; she'd failed to meet their expectations. And also under it all was the fact that she knew them, was familiar with them when everything else in New York was strange; and to her then-twelve year old mind, it was better to keep her mouth shut so they would send her back with her Aunt and Uncle than to risk being sent to yet another different place, to figure out yet another different set of rules and expectations.

Three years later she regretted that decision with every fiber of her being when she found herself a prisoner in a cold concrete basement. She'd fought, horrified and revolted by what she was being asked to do, and that man, who she'd found later was the one who owned the cabin she was in, beat her until she was dazed and in so much pain she couldn't move—and then he'd forced her to perform for him anyway, forced her to do that and more, and she very quickly figured out that she had to do what they expected her to do or they would hurt her. And even worse, they enjoyed hurting her. Sick and in pain, she had endured the three years in the basement, robotically, docilely doing what they wanted her to do, , until the inevitable happened; she'd gotten pregnant. Their solution to that was to starve her for two months; starve her, beat her, allow clients to do unspeakable things to her, until she miscarried.

Her aunt and uncle had then given her a 'home sterilization' that took away forever her ability to have children, though she didn't know it until much later. She'd been tied down to the bed, screaming in mindless agony, sense, sanity, reason gone after the horrific, brutal forced miscarriage as a man her Aunt had brought to the cabin plunged a scalpel into her belly, but because she hadn't been consciously aware of what was happening at the time, lost in a fugue state when her mind shut down, she wasn't forced to take any clients for a full month until her body was fully healed and she'd regained conscious thought. When Doc had examined her and told her she couldn't have children, she'd thought that it was because the clients who raped her had done too much internal damage. It wasn't until she'd gotten up to the cabin with Charlie and opened the trunk that evening in the kitchen that she read in her aunt's journal what had actually happened; the man who had cut her stomach open had extracted her ovaries, taking with them her ability to have children, forever. She'd fled to her room, crying, when she found that out—Charlie had found her, tried to comfort her, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to tell him then, and it was a moot point anyway; he already knew she couldn't have children, and it didn't bother him at all, and she decided that telling him would probably hurt his faithful heart even more than keeping the truth a secret. So she hadn't told him.

And it was for that same reason that she wouldn't tell him, now, how hard this decision had been for her to make. She still cringed, and she wanted, with everything in her, for Shana to come home before she had to take that last desperate step; but she already knew that it wouldn't happen. Shana was too valuable, would be too heavily guarded; she wouldn't be able to escape on her own, and short of them finding out where she was and going in with guns blazing, she would not be able to escape. Cam would, therefore, just have to go and find her.

Charlie, too, was busy with his own thoughts. _What if this is the last time we drive up here? What if she doesn't come back? If she dies. What will I do then? I've only known her a short time, only been married to her a short time, but I can't imagine a life without her. I can't imagine what I would do without her. And her tribe—what will Jennifer say? And Chief Andy?_

_Mom and Dad would be heartbroken if they found out Cam died. Mom loves her so much, even in the short time they spent together. Dad loved her too, and he hasn't liked all the girls I dated. Not even close. He didn't even like Allie and Shana._

A hint of amusement at the memory; his parents had been in New York for a weekend, came up to see him for his birthday since he hadn't been able to make it down to New Mexico. He'd met them at a New York restaurant called Knickerbocker's; he'd driven in a mixed carpool with Clayton, Shana, Snake Eyes, Allie and Flint, and left them at their table as he went to see his parents at theirs. Allie and Shana had come over to the table at the conclusion of their meal, introduced themselves to Charlie's parents, then quietly told him that Clayton would give him an evening pass and Court and Wayne would be picking them up in one of the base's other Hummers so he could have the vehicle. Shana had had what would, to anyone else, have looked like a lot to drink; he counted at least four beers, and since Charlie's father didn't know about Shana's high tolerance for alcohol, he'd been openly disapproving of how much 'a young lady' should drink.

_But Dad loved Cam. He'll be heartbroken. _

And her surrogate family. I _know she's been trading emails with the Hammonds; and I know she cried when that huge box of homemade Christmas cookies came for her last Friday from her 'Mama Annie'_. _She just got them back, she just reconnected with them again, and now here she's probably wondering if she should tell them she might not see them again. They're a military family, I know they expect that when someone goes out on a mission there's always a chance they won't come back, but it's still going to be a blow._

It was late morning when they parked outside Cam's cottage; she told him to wait, that she'd be out in a short time with the trunk and they could start back, but he turned off the engine. "We'll stay the night." _One last night in case you don't come back,_ his eyes said, and her eyes filled with tears as she led the way into their cottage, took him straight back into their bedroom, the one Jennifer and the tribe had built for them, and they made love on the bed, a bittersweet urgency making them both rush and linger, their bodies feeling the tension and urgency but their minds holding back, wanting to make this last as long as possible just in case this was the last time. He understood she felt strongly about this, that she was prepared to do it, but he also knew that she was terrified.

When they were done she slid off the bed and got dressed, and they both went and had a long talk with Jennifer Aiennatha and Chief Andy. The cabin was Cam's, but if she didn't come back, it would revert to the tribe unless she had another female relative to hold it. Cam told them quietly, what had happened, and told them what she planned to do to get Shana back; then, even quieter, told Jennifer and Chief Andy that if something were to happen to her, the cottage would be Charlie's and Charlie's parents were welcome to come and stay; Charlie's mother would inherit Cam's property and hold it unless or until Charlie had female offspring, at which point it would revert to that child. Charlie tried to protest, to tell her that he would never take another wife, but Cam just smiled sadly at him and told him that no matter what happened to her, she wanted him to be happy and if he found another woman who made him happy, she'd be upset with him for _not_ marrying the girl. And she wanted any daughter he might have to have her cabin.

It was an emotional interview, and Jennifer and Chief Andy both urged her to reconsider her decision to go undercover to find Shana. Cam stuck to her decision, and Charlie sensed they were a little angry at her for her stubbornness when they finally left Jennifer's. When they got back to her cottage Charlie lit a fire in the hearth and he and Cam played every love song for each other they knew on their flutes before going to bed.

Neither one could get much sleep that night; Cam woke up screaming from nightmares about an hour after she fell asleep, and Charlie hugged her, rocked her, soothed her, as she buried her face in his chest and cried stormily for a long, long time, stress and uncertainty and terror all rolled into the huge sobs that wracked her body. She felt so small, so fragile, in Charlie's arms as he lay in the bed and held her, throughout the long hours of the night, until nearly four in the morning. They both finally fell asleep, waking up just as sunlight crept over the windowsill, and they both got up and dressed, silently; Cam's hand trailed lovingly over the spice rack Charlie had made for her, the two traditional Navajo wedding baskets in the corner that Charlie had made for their wedding; then she went to the kitchen pantry, dragged out the trunk, and Charlie helped her load it into the back of the jeep.

To his surprise, when they started out that cold, crisp clear winter morning, she didn't have him go straight out to the interstate that would take them back to base; instead, she directed him to the place where the cabin had been. Once there, he helped her silently move stones until the door to the cellar was revealed, then she headed for the second closet in the back of the basement.

After eight years he expected the leather collar and cuffs to have rotted, frayed, mildewed; to his surprise, they were still sound. Her face was impassive as she sorted through the things, finding the leash, chains, collar, and other things he didn't know and seriously didn't want to even think about that she was apparently looking for; then she shoved the entire kit into a grocery bag and left. Charlie helped her roll stones back over the trapdoor, then they headed, at last, back to base.


	7. Chapter 31: Documentation

**Chapter 31: Documentation**

"I had no idea they kept all of this."

Allie, Alex and Liv were sitting at the table, staring at the pile of journals and paperwork Cam had pulled out of the trunk. "I took some time to look through a lot of this. I don't really know a lot of Korean, so you might want to get a translator to take a look at it and verify what it says, but the dollar figures in the far columns are unmistakable. I took the liberty of taking a colored pen and writing English translations next to some of the words for clarification."

Alex reached for a black-cover ledger and opened it. Inside, next to the Korean writing, were English words written in colored pen; she grabbed a pen and a yellow legal pad and started to take notes.

Cam sat quietly in her seat, her face impassive as Olivia and Allie started to pick through the remainder of the material Cam had pulled out for them. As she picked up a file folder, Allie saw a brightly-colored glossy travel brochure fall out, and she picked it up. "'An exclusive upstate New York mountain getaway, designed for the discerning traveler," she read from the brochure. "Nine acres of pristine, almost untouched wilderness, the closest neighbor nearly a mile and a half away. Bordering the Cattaraugus County Indian reservation with boundaries clearly marked for privacy, it offers the best of locations for hunting, fishing, camping and outdoor hiking in privacy and solitude."

"They took me outside for some of the clients' activities. Even though sound can carry—if I was well gagged they would take me out and turn me loose in the fenced area."

"Fenced area?"

"For hunting—there was an electric wire run under the ground, and my collar was fitted with an electric shock device. If I stepped outside the wires, I'd get an electric shock that would paralyze me long enough for them to find me, and I would be punished for trying to escape. But inside that electric fence I could run wherever I wanted to; they would 'hunt' me with a dart gun equipped with darts tipped with a paralyzing agent."

"Jesus." Allie croaked, staring at the brochure. The front of it showed a elegant littlewooden cabin/house, and other pictures showed pastoral, scenic views of western New York.

"Not all that far away behind the house—you can't see it in the brochure there—is a pier extending out over a small lake. The end of that pier was equipped with a pulley and rope system. They could 'fish' by tying me to the rope at the end of that pulley and lowering me under until I was drowning, then pull me out and wait till I got my breath back, then drop me back in."

"That's barbaric." Liv's face was a mix of anger and disgust.

"'Camping trips' involved them taking me outside and tying me between two trees then doing whatever they wanted to do. 'Outdoor hiking' was when they forced me to hike through the woods, with weights tied to my arms and legs."

"Excuse me."Allie dropped the brochure and ran from the room.

Cam's face was expressionless as she spoke, as Alex took notes and Olivia quietly looked through more journals. "There are pockets in the back of those journals with a few pictures here and there, and there are more in the trunk but I tried to weed out the worst ones. I think you have everything you need there to put out an arrest warrant, but I'll submit written testimony if you need that too."

Olivia flipped to the back of the journal she was looking at and looked through the pictures. "What do you think, Alex?"

"I think we won't need testimony initially. In fact, I wouldn't advise it until later." Alex leaned forward, folding her arms on the tabletop, her expression sober. "I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is on human trafficking, so if we say that we've just come into possession of child porn and it has his name and address on it somewhere, then we can say later that we didn't know the statute of limitations had run out, if there is one. And in the process of questioning him, he'll likely be able to give us details of other crimes, and hopefully at least one of them won't have a statute of limitations."

"After he gives us what we need to get me in so I can find Shana and get her out." Cam was adamant.

Allie returned to the conference room, sipping a cup of water. "Cam, are you sure you've thought this through? I know you want to get Shana back, we all do, but this is going way beyond what anyone would expect. If we do get Shana back but we can't find you, she'll never forgive herself. I know you and she have gotten very close in the last few months—"

"You don't understand. She's my best friend—she's the first female best friend I ever had, and I owe her so much—her patience, and the time she spent working with me through my PTSD. I can't even begin to figure out how to repay any of that."

"She wouldn't want you to. Shana doesn't do things because she wants people to pay her back, Cam, she does them because she thinks it's the right thing to do. She's a lot like you in that respect."

"I know that. But I still owe her, I know what she's going through and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, let alone my best friend. And as far as I can tell, this is the only way we're going to be able to get her back. You really think those damn Homeland Security guys are really putting forth their best efforts on this? They don't give a crap, and if we just wait for someone to recognize her from the Interpol pictures we're going to be waiting a long time. If ever."

They were all silent at those words. Unfortunate, but true—by now word had gotten out around base about what the interview with the FBI and Homeland Security had been like, and how even Cam—patient, mild-mannered, quiet, even-tempered Cam—had lost her temper. She had been the first one to say that those guys didn't give a crap about what happened to Shana and they were certainly not going to go out of their way to try and find her, and general opinion on base had agreed.

"Well, Clayton said we would revisit the issue if or when we found this guy. I'll tell you, although I initially didn't really want to find him, after seeing all of this and knowing he arranged it—I do what to put him in jail." Olivia sighed. "This name and address: Leo Yu, Chinatown Apartments, Bowery, in the back of this ledger, with the photos—is this him?"

"Yes. There's also an address and phone number for his travel agency on the brochure: New Horizons Travel Agency, Canal Street New York, NY. It's on the southern tip of Manhattan. I looked it up on the base computers, and it's still in business."

"We know where it is; Chinatown isn't all that far from the courthouse." Alex sounded grim.

Olivia pushed herself up out of her chair, groaning. "All right. I'm going to play my part in this and go track him down. Alex, you do your part and figure out what you can charge the son of a bitch with. Cam, sit tight. And remember—once we arrest him, Cam, whether he helps us or not, you're going to have to testify against him."

"I know." Cam's gaze and voice was steady.

"We're going to have enough of a hard time as it is. I don't know how he's regarded in the community, but if he was well-regarded there's going to be some racial backlash and we may have to pull you out to go public against this guy."

"I can't do that. Not until I'm back with Shana."

Alex interposed quickly as she saw Liv get that 'stubborn' look on her face."Stop. Let's get this guy first. Liv. This ledger says he received payments 'for procurement services' from Cam's aunt and Uncle, and we have enough documentation here to prove they trafficked her in-state and then sold her services as a child prostitute. We can get him on white collar income tax evasion, and that will give us a little time to get a warrant to search his business. If he arranged for some of those clients to rent this upstate 'vacation lodge' there will be paperwork with the clients names on them, we can compare his client list with the logs that Cam's aunt and uncle kept. If some of them match we can argue in court that there is reason to believe that he did 'procure' clients for the human traffickers and makes him an accessory—at which point we'd hand him to the Feds for both the tax evasion and the human trafficking." She sat there for a moment, staring abstractedly at the paperwork, thinking; then she said, "Cam. Do you know if this guy has any pictures of you, or if he might have had pictures of you at one time?"

"He does. He had to in order to advertise me as a luxury commodity for the cabin visitors." Her voice went flat.

"Liv, if he still has pictures of her we could get him on possession of child porn too, which will let us hold him for a while. Long enough for Cam to do whatever she needs to do. And if she…isn't back…by a reasonable amount of time, we've still got a case against him for tax evasion on his 'unreported earnings' plus whatever we turn up in his possession."

"Fair enough. Let me get started on tracking this guy down." Olivia had her cell phone out and was busy sending a text message.

The Judge's Chamber was a little bar-and-restaurant place not too far from the courthouse, which made it an ideal hangout for cops and lawyers after work. This time was no exception as Alex and Liv walked in and spotted the two people they wanted to talk to in the back of the dimly-lit restaurant section; they headed for the small booth.

Odafin Tutuola, known affectionately as 'Fin' to his coworkers and friends, looked up as Olivia and Alex approached, and slid the table back. "Whoa, Liv. I thought it was just you and Alex, if I knew you were bringing a third person I would have gotten a bigger booth."

"He's not a full person yet, he's like, half a person." Alex joked as she slid into the booth first.

Olivia gave Alex a look filled with mock insult. "I'll have you know the last sonogram shows him having all ten fingers and toes and all legs and arms and everything a baby is supposed to have, so he is a whole person, thank you very much."

Alex laughed at her. "Well, but in size he adds another half a person. So he's a half a person." She held up her hand as Olivia started to remonstrate. "All right, all right, I'm not going to argue."

Olivia glared at her, but refrained from further comment. Instead, she turned to John Munch, and the levity vanished. "John. Do you remember, eight years ago, you handled a case with a little Asian girl who was removed from her aunt and uncle's house? She refused to talk, and you had to give her back—and a few years later, she surfaced in some violent child porn?"

"Yes. And earlier this year you pulled her folder out of the back of the victims' drawer and said she'd been found." They all knew about the 'victims' drawer'; a collection of photos of children being abused, victimized, children who hadn't been identified; the files were then dated and put in what was called the 'victims drawer' at the SVU. It was actually more of a whole file cabinet now, than a simple drawer, and a lot of the earliest pictures were of children who were now no longer children—but although the number of children's pictures that went into the drawer were a lot higher in quantity than what went out, each time they could pull a child from that drawer and label the child 'found' was a small victory.

"Yes. Her name is Cameron Arlington, and she's now a Ranger in the US Army. She's a subordinate of my boyfriend's, currently assigned to his top-secret project, and she's a wonderful young woman. She recently got married." It was a vast oversimplification of the story, but this was easier than telling them the whole story; Liv didn't know how much of it would be considered 'classified' anyway.  
"Is this that young woman you wanted to interview at Sealview earlier this summer?" Fin interjected.

"Yes. I can't go into it now, some of it is sensitive, but we turned up some evidence that might lead to the person who arranged for her to be trafficked and victimized." She handed the travel brochure to John. "Hunting involved darts and a paralytic agent specifically measured for the weight of a fifteen year old girl. Fishing involved repeatedly nearly drowning said fifteen year old. I think you get the point."

"New Horizons Travel Agency, Canal Street." John read. "Can we go after him?"

"We have a ten year old ledger that has his name, a bank account number, and various dollar amounts listed as 'payment for procurement of clients'." Alex pushed over the ledger. John looked at it like he couldn't decide, for a moment, if he really wanted to look at it, but finally picked it up.

As his eyes roved over the page his frown got deeper and his eyes stonier. "This guy made thousands of dollars off 'procuring' clients to molest her."

"Yes. And what are the chances that he reported all that income?" Alex nodded grimly as the light went on in his eyes. "Now don't say anything yet because you haven't heard the second part of the story. One of the soldiers on our classified base, Shana O'Hara, went missing in the Congo when we went a couple weeks ago. There was an accident, a bridge collapsed, she was washed downstream and picked up by rogues, who subsequently sold her to human traffickers. We don't know where she is right now, and the only plan so far come up with is Cam Arlington's own, which involves arresting Mr. Leo Yu and then legally blackmailing him into helping insert Cam herself as a slave into the human trade underground to try and find Shana."

"Wait. She's a former victim herself and she came up with a plan that involved her going back into that life to get her friend out? I haven't met her but I don't know if I could do that for anyone." Fin interjected.

"Not even me? Thanks, partner," Munch said in mock hurt.

"Can it, John. Your bony ass wouldn't be appealing to anyone anyway."

"I'll have you know that my 'bony ass', as you so lovingly call it, has been married to four different women who apparently found it pleasing enough to marry me at the time—"

"Yeah, so tell me how that turned out?" When John was silent, Fin turned back to Liv and Alex. "So you want us to go find this Leo Yu and bring him in for a white collar-crime so you can shake him down for information about the human trafficking? What if he won't cooperate?"

"That ledger shows a lot of income that was possibly not reported. When you arrest him we can get warrants for his business records and how much he was paid to arrange trips for his clients. I'm almost positive that at least a few of the names on his client list are going to match the ones in the front of that ledger—" John flipped it to the front to have a look, "And once that happens we can get him on procurement. In the process of getting him on procurement we can get warrants for his personal documents, particularly relating to his income and finances, and Cam herself says that she's nearly certain that he has pictures of her—he visited her personally on two occasions that she can remember. That will allow us to get him at least on tax evasion and fraud, possibly on child porn. After which I'm pretty sure we can cut him a deal, some legal blackmail to get him to cooperate."

"And after that? Don't we have to have Ms. Arlington herself testify?"

Liv sighed. "We're still working on that. Cam's going undercover to pose as a slave—the plan is to insert her into the slave underground with an implanted tracer; when she finds Shana she'll stop moving from owner to owner and stick with Shana, and at the point where she's stopped moving for two weeks we can go and extract both of them. Once they're back she says she's perfectly willing to testify."

"How does she plan on finding Shana?"

"Shana's physically unique and Cam is…damaged meat, in the language of the slave trade. Her body is extensively scarred from a fire. According to her, because Shana is so physically unique—natural red hair and green eyes—whoever buys her is going to need 'damaged meat' around to coerce Shana to cooperate."

Silence around the table. Fin broke it first. "I can't say that I like the idea, but I also can't find anything wrong with it too. I just hope that Cam knows what she's gettin' into."

"She knows," Liv said quietly. "Fin, she was taken to western New York when she was fifteen and kept captive in a concrete basement for three years while a variety of 'clients' paid incredible sums of money to 'vacation' at the cabin and molest her. When she finally was able to slip out of her bonds in an unguarded moment, she didn't run away; the thought of the world outside didn't even cross her mind. She poured gas all over the house and set fire to it, then stayed. She fully intended to die in that fire herself because she didn't want to live, that's how she became so badly scarred. The difference is that this time, she's not fifteen, she knows exactly what to expect, and she is also a highly-trained, elite US Army soldier. She is fully capable of taking out anyone who tries to do something to her that she doesn't allow, and also is aware of the fact that suicide is a viable alternative should things go south and she can't handle whatever happens."

She pinned both of them with a pleading gaze. "If he doesn't cooperate we can throw the book at him and bury him in jail for the rest of his life. If he does cooperate and Cam survives, she can testify and finally get some closure. If she doesn't come back, we can prosecute him for murder even without her body. If we don't find anything to pin the human trafficking on him, we can still give him to the Feds for tax evasion and fraud. It's a win-win situation—if you agree."

John sighed heavily. "We agree. We'll go pick him up tomorrow. You gonna explain all this to Captain Cragen or should we?"


	8. Chapter 32: New Horizons

**Chapter 32: New Horizons**

"Alexandra, this is highly irregular. Court hasn't even officially started for the day and here you are already asking me to give you a warrant."

Alex had gone to one of her favorite Judges, Lena Petrovsky, to get an arrest warrant for Leo Yu signed. They had a long enough history together that she was reasonably certain the older woman would grant it.

"If it wasn't so time sensitive I would have waited until court opened, but this is a matter of some urgency and is also confidential, I also wanted to bring this to you before it got busy in case you had any questions."

"Not another public figure."

"No, Your Honor, but it involves a member of the Army."

"You're kidding." Petrovsky walked over to her desk and put on her glasses, then picked up the warrant request paperwork Alex had filled out the night before and looked at it critically. "This is for a travel agent suspected of tax evasion. This isn't even your unit, Alexandra."

"The evidence pointing to Mr. Yu came up during an investigation into allegations of child porn and human trafficking, Your Honor." Alex pushed the ledger across the table to Petrovsky.

Petrovsky opened it, looked inside, looked up at Alex. "This is written in Chinese."

"It's in Korean, actually, Your Honor. Some translations are written in colored pen beside the original."

"Can you vouch for the fact that the translations are correct?"

"With a reasonable degree of certainty, though I will be giving it to the translators the DA's office uses to fully translate. The notations in colored pen were done by a currently-serving US Army officer who was born in Korea to a US Air Force Captainand grew up at Osan Air Force base."

"And how do you know this officer? Is this related to your sudden stretches of absence lately? I heard that you came back from the Congo with a reserve commission for the US Army and I have to say I never pegged you for the type."

"I never pegged me for the type either." Alex smiled ruefully. "I'm sorry I can't explain how it happened, Lena, it's classified information."

Petrovsky looked like she was about to say something else, then shrugged and focused on the ledger. "Give me a quick explanation of what I'm seeing, Alexandra, I see a list of names, a descriptor of hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, special services, extended stay, and dollar amounts. Nothing out of the ordinary for a travel agent."

"This ledger was not kept by the travel agent, but the caretakers for the property Mr. Yu owns upstate. It burned in a fire about eight years ago, but this is what it looked like until then." Alex passed over the travel brochure.

"So he used his agency to get renters for the vacation home he owned upstate. A little questionable, ethically, but nothing I would be concerned about."

"Until you understand that the 'hunter' in question was using darts tipped with a paralytic agent to hunt a young fifteen year old girl held captive at that cabin by the property caretakers. 'Fishing' involved tying up said young girl and throwing her off a pier on the lake at the property, then fishing her out and repeating the process. The outdoor hiking involved forcing that same young girl through the woods bordering the property with weights attached to her body. The dollar amounts you see there are funds paid to that young girl's guardians for the privilege of abusing her."

Petrovsky looked horrified. "Alex, that's sick. Can you verify this story?"

"The fifteen-year-old victim of those atrocities is the same one who did the translation and is a current serving member of the US Army. If you look at the travel brochure, it specified 'right amenities' for the 'discerning traveler'. She is willing to testify if absolutely necessary."

Petrovsky thought about that for a minute. "So why the emergency? If this Army officer is currently serving she isn't in any danger—and I assume she's no longer fifteen."

"Her name is Cameron Arlington, and she's twenty-six now. She isn't the emergency." Alex took a deep breath. "During my last trip to the Congo a group of these soldiers went out with me to provide protection when the UN requested my assistance with finding some of the children that I'd been helping who went missing when their village was raided. One of the soldiers, a Master Sergeant, was swept downstream when a bridge collapsed due to the monsoon-swollen river and was captured by the rogue soldiers, who then subsequently sold her to human traffickers. She is out there somewhere in the world right now headed for the international slave market in Amsterdam. Our purpose in going after Mr. Yu is not only to finally get him for human trafficking but also to get his help in getting Cam undercover into the slave trading underworld so she can go find the missing soldier—who is also her best friend. It's not actually that simple but there are a lot of details I can't give you about this because the soldier, as well as the base, is classified."

"Alexandra, the police are not a branch of the military. We don't go around arresting citizens because the military wants to cut a deal with them."

"On a normal basis I would agree, Lena, but I'm finding it hard to be objective on this one. The soldier who disappeared in the Congo is a personal friend of mine, and she's now been missing for three weeks. If we don't find her soon, I'm worried that we may never find her—the underground slave trade is tricky and vast and as much as I personally don't like this plan, I can't figure out any other way for us to get her back."

"Will the soldier be able to testify?"

Alex blew out a breath. "That's why we want to go after him for the tax fraud. There is a chance that Cam might not come back from this, and neither might Sha—the soldier she is looking for—so if that happens we can still put him in jail for the tax fraud. If they do come back she'll be able to testify to the human trafficking charges and we can get him for both. No matter what happens to her we'll still be able to jail the man for something."

Petrovsky picked up the pen and signed the paper. "Go get him. And, Alex…I wish this soldier luck. And you too."

"Thanks, Lena."

By the time the judge's office door closed behind her she had her cellphone out. "I have the warrant signed by Judge Petrovsky, Fin. Go!"

"And that will be it. I'm sure you'll enjoy your trip, I've arranged for your choice of conveniences to be waiting for you when you get to Singapore; you'll be able to choose one right away and begin your vacation immediately." Leo Yu oozed sincerity and congeniality as he closed the travel folder and passed it across the table to the client behind it.

Maxwell Stuart smiled as he took the folder with one hand and opened it. What happened next was almost too quick for anyone but a discerning person to see, but his hand slipped an envelope out of his pocket into the folder, then he passed the folder back to Mr. Yu. "If you could please slip a card there so I can recommend your excellent services to others?"

Yu slipped the envelope out of the folder and into a desk drawer, then took out a business card and put it in the folder. "Thank you for your business, I hope you have a wonderful trip, and of course, recommendations would be welcome and appreciated."

Maxwell Stuart smiled and stepped out of Leo Yu's cubicle at the travel agency, then out into the lobby and out the door. As he did so, a man stepped in; tall, thin, ascetic, with silvering hair and a look that could only be described as 'sarcastic'. "Mr. Leo Yu?"

"Yes, that's me," Leo was all smiles. "Can I help you?"

"Yes. I was told by a mutual acquaintance that you were the one to talk to about arranging vacations and trips for 'discerning' travelers, with all the best 'conveniences'?"

"Ah, yes, that's right, that's me! Could I ask which client referred you to me? I like to keep track of referrals so that clients who make referrals can benefit from my special Referral Incentives program."

"Certainly. Mr. Steven Jackson?" John Munch kept a poker face as he said the man's name. Alex had allowed them to photocopy some of the pages of the ledger and the name "Steven Jackson' had come up several times as being a regular customer at the upstate New York cabin; he'd also been busted three years ago by Brooklyn Special Victims for the rape of an immigrant child; as the community had been widely supposed to be 'full of illegals' he had raped the child thinking that the 'illegal' parents would not file a report. Only after he had been arrested did he find out that the child was not illegal, was in fact only waiting on a scheduled date to take the oath, and the parents were most certainly filing charges.

"Ah, yes. Mr. Jackson. Such a regrettable incident."

"Well, if he'd been a little more careful about the child he picked, it would have ended the way he wanted it to; the parents would either never have filed charges or if they did, they would find themselves under scrutiny for being illegal and he wouldn't have been charged. Now he'll do jail time and be registered as a sex offender." John tried to smile, although the words were sour in his mouth. "You have to think like a wolf and not foul your own den."

"Exactly!" Leo smiled and rubbed his hands. "Come on in, have a seat. Now, what are you looking for?"

"I like visiting the Asians, their culture is quite delightful." It wasn't the first time they'd arrested a travel agent/procurer, and he doubted it would be the last. "The food is the best. Have you ever had lamb cooked in Thai style? The youth of the lamb makes the dish taste better, I think."

"Absolutely," Leo hunted in his desk drawer and came up with a brochure for a resort in Thailand.

Using the coded phrases which meant something entirely different than a casual observer would have thought, the deal was soon finished and Mr. Yu finally signed on the last line, then asked John for payment—and started stupidly in shock at the metal handcuff that appeared around his wrist. "Mr. Leo Yu, you are under arrest for facilitating an overseas travel-for-sex trip, and you are also under arrest for

tax evasion and fraudulently reporting your income."

"Normally I would point out that I don't like being the military's stooge," John said to Fin as he watched Yu squirm in his seat in the interrogation room. "In this case, though. I'll make an exception. He really is a piece of work."

"Who is this?" Don Cragen had been walking by and saw Leo Yu sitting in the interrogation room. "And what's this I hear about being a military stooge?"

Fin shot John a 'see-what-you-just-did' look, but spoke up. "Picked him up trying to arrange a trip for a client out of the country for sex tourism with underage children."

"And this is part of a different investigation? How did we know?"

"We found a ledger with his name in it and payments to him for procuring clients for child prostitution. It was in connection with one of the children in the victims' drawer." John handed the folder to Don, hoping Don wouldn't pay too much attention to the dates on those photos.

Vain hope. "All right, John, I remember Liv pulling this out of that drawer earlier this year and she told you this child, who isn't a child anymore, has been found. Are you only getting to this guy now or is something going on that I don't know about?"

"They were acting on my behalf," said a clear voice at his elbow, and he turned and looked at the petite Asian woman standing in an 'attention' stance just behind him. Flanking her was Alex and two other soldiers, one of who Don recognized. "Gunnery Sergeant LaFitte?"

"Yes, Sir." The big Marine saluted, in deference to the fact that Don Cragen was also ex-military himself. "This is Charlie Ironknife, he's married to Cam."

Cragen took a second look at the short young woman. "You look familiar."

"I was the child in those photos." Disbelievingly, Cragen looked down at the folder in his hands, where the picture at the top of the pile showed a young girl, about fifteen, pinned under a light-skinned male body.

"Oh my God." He was at a loss as to what to say.

"Captain Cragen, Liv and Alex told me you're former military yourself, so I'm sure you understand the need for discretion." Her voice was just loud enough for Don, John, Fin, Alex, Ettienne and Charlie to hear, but not loud enough to carry to the rest of the squadroom, who were trying very, very hard not to look too interested in the three uniformed Army soldiers standing by the interrogation room door. "I was a victim of this man's human trafficking, and now a very close friend of mine, also an Army soldier, has been caught, captured after a disastrous mission in the Congo." Don's eyes flicked up to Alex's face, and saw guilt written there.

So, all of these people knew each other and Alex. And he trusted Alex.

"This man is guilty of trafficking, of procuring customers like the man in that picture to come to the cabin where I was held captive, to molest me. There was an accident, and a fire burned the cabin, and I don't know if he knows I'm alive. I'm hoping the shock of seeing me will prompt him into giving me the information I need to pull off a deepcover mission into the trafficking underworld so I can get my friend out. Alex and Olivia and your officers," she nodded to John and Fin, "offered to help us already but I will understand completely if you ask them not to pursue this." She took a deep breath. "However, if you can see your way clear to helping me get my friend out of the traffickers hands, I will testify in open court to what this man did to me, what he arranged for others to come to the cabin and do to me, and I will cooperate with you and do whatever I need to in order for Alex to build a case against him and successfully prosecute him."

"Do you know for sure that he has the information you need?"

"Yes," she said with absolute certainty. "Alex told me that there was enough evidence—the ledger I gave her, among other things, for her to be successfully able to prosecute him even if I don't return from the operation." She seemed to sense his next question even before he asked it. "Yes, there's a chance that I won't come back. But you'll still be able to prosecute him without me, although the case will be easier if I am here. So whether I succeed in finding my friend and come back or if I don't, it'll be a win-win situation for you either way."

Don thought for a quick second, then made up his mind. "Go on," he said, motioning to Leo Yu in the interrogation room. "After you all are done," he pinned Alex with a look as well, "I want to talk to all of you. Do you understand?"

"Yes Sir," came from John, Fin, Alex, and the three military officers at once. Don nodded brusquely and headed for his office to look over the folder, ledgers, and wonder at the strangeness of the world.

Outside the interrogation room, Alex faced Cam. "Are you ready for this?"

Cam sighed and squared her shoulders. "I'm not fifteen anymore. And this is a police station, and Charlie's here. And you guys. You won't let anything happen to me." She took a deep breath and pushed the door to the interrogation room, walking in, closely followed by Alex.


	9. Chapter 33: Attempted Escape

**Chapter 33: Attempted Escape**

A long time later—she had no idea how long—the drug-fogged haze cleared a bit.

One of the side effects of pentothal, she remembered from her training, was that while under the influence of the drug time tended to distort, to either seem like it was passing very quickly or very slowly. She had fuzzy remembrances of this cargo ship stopping several times; the two women who had helped her at the beginning of the trip, cleaning her up and giving her what little food and water they could spare, were gone, probably offloaded at another port somewhere on this nightmarish trip. As she scanned the container now, she saw only dull, empty eyes. There was no life, no spark, as there was with those other two women.

The other occupants of the container were female, and they too were kept chained. The only time they weren't was when Yembe—that was the name of the ship's captain—had them taken out one by one to be hosed down with seawater, and the only ones he took out were those who didn't fight, who cowered and whimpered and cried and were certain not to create a fuss or try to escape. As the door to the shipping container swung open and she saw Yembe and two other men standing there, she made a sudden decision. She would act as if they'd broken her. Maybe then he'd let her up, unchain her, take her outside—and she was desperate enough right now to try to dive over the rail if she could just be free.

So when he came to her, she cringed as best she could, managed a scared little whimper that she remembered hearing from when Cam got lost in one of her PTSD flashbacks. Thank goodness for those; she'd seen how Cam's body reacted and she pulled on those memories now, cringing and shrinking from him, whimpering as the toe of his boot nudged her bruised side. That whimper was only half-feigned; though she couldn't really tell without being able to feel the bones, she suspected that she either had a very mild fracture or a very bad bruise there.

He leaned down to see the dusky blue-black smear on her skin, touched it. She cried out then, it really did hurt. He swore, putting a hand on the rest of her ribcage, feeling her then swore. "Get her up and bring her out. I need to clean her off and check this. If she is badly hurt we may not be paid what we are owed for bringing her in." He smiled as he looked down at her, and she had to fight to not spit in that grinning face, had to fight her own instincts and keep acting broken. Her ruse worked, and all she had to do was wait until they unchained her and got her out.

Hands grabbed her wrists, and for the first time since the whole nightmare started on this ship, the chains were unlocked from the floor, her arms and legs released. She cried, then, as muscles and tendons that had been stretched into one position for far too long were now allowed to come down, to hang at her sides. The sudden change in position was excruciating, and she curled in a fetal position crying for a long time.

They finally grabbed the chains hanging from the shackles and wrapped them around both wrists, tethering her hands in front of her. Yembe grabbed the end of the chain and started to walk, and Shana tried to get her feet under her and walk after him. Her thigh and calf muscles protested, every joint, muscle and bone in her body screaming in pain, and she didn't try to hide her crying, her whimpering, as she was led out of the cargo container. Not that she could even if she'd wanted to; everything in her body just hurt so much…

It was dusk; there was little light here, but she smelled saltwater, the briny tang of the ocean, could see, around her, the dim shapes of other cargo containers on either side of the narrow aisle they were walking. Her legs, unused to walking after the days—how many?—of being chained, didn't want to obey her, and she had to focus her still-drug-blurred mind on lifting first one foot, then the other.

Yembe suddenly yanked hard on the end of the chain, and she lost her balance and crumpled to the deck, then cringed back into the corner provided by two cargo containers as he stepped forward, towering over her. _Look defeated. Look broken. Cower. Make him forget you're a trained fighter, make him think he broke you._ So she cringed, cowered, cried, keeping in mind all the mannerisms that Cam had displayed whenever she'd gotten lost in one of her PTSD flashbacks.

She wasn't quite the actress that Allie was, but it was apparently good enough. Yembe laughed, a cruel sound, as he brought over a hose. "All right, let's wash her off." And then she didn't have to pretend to cringe and shiver as cold seawater blasted from the nozzle of the hose. "Wash yourself!" he commanded.

It was cold. And it smelled like seawater. But oh, God, the simple luxury of being able to scrape the crusted filth off her skin! The men hooted and hollered, clearly enjoying the spectacle, and tears flowed down her face, mixing with the water on her cheeks, but she didn't stop scrubbing until the water stopped coming out of the hose. And she fixed her eyes on the narrow aisle between the cargo containers and tensed, getting ready to run for it the minute one of the three men moved from that narrow aisle.

Yembe took a step forward, grinning. And Shana made her move.

Nowhere near as agile and limber as she usually was, reflexes dulled by the drugs still in her system and stiffness in her muscles from what felt like an eternity spent chained to the floor of that shipping container, her rush still took her past Yembe, past the two men, and propelled her in a run down the narrow aisle. She reached an intersection and took a hard right, reasoning that eventually she would have to reach one side of the boat if she just picked a direction and kept heading that way. Behind her she heard Yembe roar, heard the two men with him babble in African, but she forced herself to keep running.

Adrenaline seemed to have chased the last of the drugged haze from her mind, but she felt her legs tremble. At first she couldn't think of why she'd be feeling wobbly, then it hit her. Withdrawal. She'd apparently been given high enough concentrations of certain drugs for a long enough time to start withdrawal symptoms, and she cursed, bending all of her will into forcing herself not to give in. She had to get off this boat!

And then she ran smack into a slim young man standing in the middle of the next intersection staring at her.

Mathieu had gone in search of the captain to ask about their next destination. He had just turned the corner that led to the stern of the ship when he saw a naked white woman running toward him, her face full of terror and panic, and ran right into him. She stared at him for one second, then blurted, "Help me—hide me—please, get me out of here!"

He saw the shackles on her wrists, the raw sores where the rough, unfiled metal had chafed her skin; saw the heavy chain that ran between the shackles, and realized instantly; it was this cargo ship that the Congolese officials had been looking for, it must be. She was the important cargo that _Capítan_ Yembe was trying to get out of Africa before someone saw her. She was beautiful, milky pale skin and flaming hair, although that fair skin was smeared with horrific bruises and her hair was tangled, matted, and filthy, and now he knew why their 'cargo' had required such frequent inspections—that had been their excuse for why they vanished from the wheelhouse so often and so frequently on this trip.

"Come," he said, and although his English wasn't that good, she apparently understood. He slipped his arm into his, seeing her wince slightly as he hit a bruise but otherwise remained stoic. Pity and fury washed over him; he had known about the human trafficking out of Africa, who hadn't? but he had never thought the traders would have been so bold as to try to snatch and transport a white woman.

He took a hard right, then a left. Although officially he was the navigator, he had also overseen the loading of the containers and knew how they were laid out on deck. Just around this corner, and there was somewhere where he could hide her; a small locker, close to the floor of the deck that they kept all kinds of coiled ropes and other equipment in. Not the most comfortable of places, but he rather got the feeling that she didn't care.

Just one more turn…

And there, standing in front of the equipment locker he had thought to hide her in, he saw one of the other crew; a big burly man. _That makes the Capítan and three others. How many more people on this cursed vessel know about this and do nothing?_

And then a heavy weight descended on him from above, and he crumpled to the deck, losing his grip on the woman's arm.

She went into action then, and he knew that there was more to her. She moved like a trained fighter, and though she was dazed and slightly uncoordinated, the man who had fallen on Mathieu was yanked off him, spun around, and a bare heel crushed his throat and his life as his spine snapped under her bare foot. She followed it up with a rush that she plainly intended to take out the big man at the rail, but he met her head on, arms reaching out to try a huge bear hug. She danced out of the way, and Mathieu knew that she was a trained fighter; no one he knew could move like that outside of the American Hollywood movies his son liked watching on TV. Smooth, as graceful as a dance.

Then her foot caught a coil of rough rope on the deck and stumbled, went down gracelessly. And then the big man was on her, wrapping his arms around her throat and squeezing effortlessly as he straightened. She was shorter than he was, and lighter, and he held her a few feet off the deck with his hands wrapped around her throat. She clawed at his hands, choking, gagging, retching, but he didn't let go until she was hanging limp from his hands, raspy breathing the only sign that she was alive, then he dropped her to the deck.

"_Capítan_…it was this ship they were looking for. She is the reason why the closed the ports in two countries! _Capítan_, we must let her go, they will not stop looking for such a one!"

"All we have to do is get her to Amsterdam, Mathieu, and she is no longer our concern. And we will be paid handsomely. She is worth much money on the international market." Yembe's tone was soft, persuasive. "I know you have a young son in the hospital, and money is tight. I will give you a share of the money we will get for delivering her. A fair share. Look at her. She is worth much, and you can pay all your son's hospital bills with your share of the fee."

Mathieu looked at the unconscious woman gasping for air on the deck; the big African who had strangled her was now locking the end of the chain to a ring set in the side of the wheelhouse of the ship, a ring mean to tie off cargo support straps. The ring was a good eight feet off the deck, and her toes didn't touch the hard surface.

"A fair share, Mathieu. Think about it. And we will let you punish her."

Mathieu stared at Yembe in horror. He couldn't have just said what Mathieu thought he said. Punish her? Punish this woman who had fought so valiantly against her captors even when she would have known that fighting was helpless? He had seen his wife, Caimile, look like that. She had died giving birth to his son five years ago, but he still remembered it. She had been dying, knew he was dying, but had still fought to give birth to his son before she died. And he looked at this woman, now, she had the same spirit as his wife; she was starting to regain consciousness, her eyes opening, and he saw they were a deep green, an astonishing emerald of a truer green than any gemstone he'd ever seen come out of the gemstone mines in the south, and he shook his head, almost transfixed. "No. No, this is not right."

He heard the whisper of a gun being pulled out from under a leather belt, and he knew what was going to happen, and he closed his eyes. _I am sorry, my son. I told you, once, that I would do anything for you, but I can't. I can't do this. I'm so sorry. _He heard the gun cock, and smiled. _I'm coming, Caimille._

And the world went dark.

He'd looked at her with those dark eyes, just for a moment, and she saw something she hadn't seen since this whole nightmare began; decency, kindness, resolution, compassion. And then Yembe pulled the trigger and Shana screamed in terror and horror as blood sprayed everywhere, as the top of her would-be rescuer's head came off, came apart. And she felt so sick…she vomited helplessly, retched, gagged, nothing left in her stomach to come up , her throat burning from having been choked into unconsciousness moments ago, still unable to control her heaves as tears flowed unchecked down her face.

_He tried to help me—he tried to save me. He wanted to, I could see it in his eyes, and they killed him because he wouldn't hit me. I'm so sorry, oh God, I'm so sorry…_

Her choked sobs turned into screams as Yembe struck her with his belt as she hung by her wrists from the ring. With her body stretched taut, muscles hard, the thick leather straps didn't cut her skin as much as it pounded flesh, pounded tight muscle, leaving shocking agony and almost paralyzing bruises. The other two men joined in, and for an eternity she hung there, screaming, as heavy leather belts struck her body. In the back of her mind she realized that they weren't using anything that would cut her skin, scar her and reduce her value, but too much of her mind was taken up with the pain, and she 'screamed' mentally, with every fiber of her being. _Snake Eyes! Snake Eyes! Please! Please! _**"PLEASE!"**

Snake Eyes snapped awake, mouth open in a silent scream, completely disoriented in the dark as he fumbled for the switch on the tiny lamp on the night table he knew almost as well as he knew his own. He'd woken up beside Shana too many times not to know where the switch was, and he found it almost by instinct.

Warm golden light flooded the room, and he found himself staring at Shana's closet door, heart pounding, skin slick with sweat, a silent scream still vibrating his throat. That had been the most vivid nightmare/dream he'd ever had—in fact, since Shana had gone missing his dreams of her had been even more vivid than ever. And they were all different, of places and things that he had never personally seen, and he wondered, for the umpteenth time, whether there was some hint of reality to the dreams, whether there actually was some sort of connection between him and Shana that allowed him to be with her, in some way, while she was going through this.

His shoulders twitched at the memory of the 'dream', if dream it had been. He could almost feel the bruises left by the belts, could almost trace every line left by the belt across his/Shana's back, could almost feel the shackles digging into his/Shana's wrists. His wrists hurt, almost a sympathetic throb, and he looked down almost reflexively—and froze.

Visible around his right wrist was a thin red line. No, two red lines, circling his wrists exactly where those rough metal shackles had circled Shana's in his dream. Disbelievingly, he turned his arm, held it up; yes, those lines went all the way around, two inches wide, exactly parallel—just like Shana's.

And the same around his left wrist.

He stared at his wrists for a long moment, unable to make sense of it, then felt his calves throbbing. He swung his feet and legs out of Shana's bed, stood with his back to the full-length mirror hanging on her closet door—and stared in complete befuddlement at the clear red weal left right across his upper calf muscle. As he looked, it was already fading, leaving behind a faint throbbing, almost a ghost pain; but around his wrists, those two parallel lines, exactly spaced two inches apart.

_Shana…_ her name, almost a prayer, a plea to the universe that somehow he hoped would reach her. _Shana, please. I'm coming for you…hold on, baby, please!_ His lips formed the words, and tears streamed unchecked down his cheeks as he lay back down on his side, buried his face in her pillow, breathed in her scent and cried. _Hold on, baby, please…!_

Hurt. Cold. Muscles hurt. Arms and legs stretched, chained tighter than before. Needle, slipping into her arm. The drugs brought some relief to her brutalized body.

But even as she welcomed the oblivion that the drugs brought, she heard once again, very faint and far away, a familiar voice cry _hold on, baby, please_…but as she tried to put a name to the voice, darkness cocooned her and she slipped into a soft, velvety darkness where there was no pain, not anymore…


	10. Chapter 34: Leo Yu

**Chapter 34: Leo Yu**

"You!"

There was no mistaking the look of mingled rage and fury and fear in Leo Yu's eyes as he stared at the quiet young woman who stepped into the interrogation room.

"Yes. Me." Cam showed no outward sign of what she must have been feeling at facing, for the first time as a free adult, the man who arranged for her captivity for three years as a child. "Surprised?"

"You're—you're supposed to be dead!" Yu howled.

"Oh come now. Did you really believe that or did you just tell yourself that when you saw the newspaper clipping after the fire and the clipping said there were only two bodies in the rubble?" Cam smiled thinly. "I'll bet you knew I didn't die." She leaned across the table, her face inches from Yu's. "You knew I wasn't dead. I'll bet you thought one of your clients decided he wanted me all to himself and set fire to the cabin just to steal your property. Me." She circled him, and the man definitely had the look of a wounded gazelle watching a circling lioness. His eyes followed her, and Alex noticed that he seemed to want to keep his shoulders facing Cam; all body language signs that Alex knew, from sparring with Shana and learning self-defense moves, meant that Yu definitely saw Cam as a possible physical threat. Cam was rattling him. Good, hopefully that meant they'd get something positive out of this.

Cam tossed the ledger, now packed in a plastic evidence bag, on the table. "I don't know if you ever saw this or not. My Aunt and Uncle kept a ledger. It has names, dates, what activity the clients paid them to be able to do to me, what they liked, what they didn't like. They knew which activities I hated the most and they also kept track of what I hated so much I couldn't 'be a good girl' for the client. They kept track of what they punished me for and how they punished me." She leaned forward across the table again and smiled, and it wasn't a nice smile either. "I also know they sent you pictures. Did you keep those pictures?"

Yu's eyes flicked from side to side, quickly.

Cam stood back from the table. "He still has them. Tell the other detectives to look for child porn. He'll have them somewhere at home, probably in the bedroom." She smiled again, more like a wolf baring her teeth in a snarl. "In close reach of his night table. After all, he never could find a woman who looked young enough to please him." She looked at Alex. "I'll come back and talk to him once your detectives are done tossing his apartment. In the meantime, get me out of this room before I kill the piece of filth."

Alex couldn't get the interrogation room door open fast enough.

Don Cragen looked up as his office door opened and Alex and the female soldier walked in. Before she could say anything, he held up a hand. "Let's adjourn to one of the conference rooms. I don't think my office is big enough for all of us."

Once he, Alex, John, Fin, Cam, Ettienne, and Charlie were seated in the conference room, he pinned Alex with an expectant look. "Now. Care to tell me what's going on?"

Alex extracted the ledger from the evidence bag and handed it across the table to him. As he picked it up and started to leaf through it, she started to tell him the story. About Cam, about her childhood at Osan, her father's death, her coming to live in New York with her Aunt and Uncle. John broke in briefly to speak, quietly, about the investigation he'd spearheaded eight years before that he'd ultimately had to abandon because Cam had been too scared to tell him what was going on, and then Alex picked up the thread of the story. She detailed the slow withdrawal and deterioration of Cam's outer support system—school and dance classes—and the isolation that finally and ultimately led to her captivity in the mountain cabin in Western New York. "The ledger you're looking at is a list of the clients who came to 'rent' the cabin, some of them procured through the travel agent sitting in your interrogation room. There's a list of names, descriptions of what they wanted to do with Cam, and how much they paid her Aunt and Uncle and Leo Yu for the privilege of molesting her."

Don stared at the ledger, looking revolted and disgusted. "And we're just now getting around to this?"

"I spent three years there. By the end of those three years I didn't care if I lived or died anymore." Cam's soft words fell heavily in the silent room. "I got free of the shackles one night and grabbed a gas can from the garage, then doused the place with it and set fire to the cabin. I didn't try to escape—it was never in my mind. Where, after all, would I go? I just," she swallowed hard, "I just wanted to make sure they couldn't hurt anyone, ever again. The fire was still raging when the floor collapsed and I fell through and when I woke up I found I'd survived. I was pretty badly burned, the fire took most of my skin between my knees and my chest, but I survived and I wandered by accident onto the Iroquois reservation and they took me in, took care of me. While I was recovering they figured out who I was and where I'd come from, and they backtracked and found what was left of the burned cabin. The ledger and all the paperwork were being held by the Iroquois tribe who found me, and I only acquired it over the summer and realized what it was."

Ettienne took up the thread of the story; as the ranking military officer there, it was his duty after all. "We went on a mission a few weeks ago to the Congo with a team of ten to find some witnesses for the ICC that had gone missing when rogue militia raided the village," he said succinctly. "We did manage to successfully rescue the witnesses, all of whom were children," and Fin grimaced in disgust, "But in the process one of our soldiers, a friend named Shana O'Hara, was captured by the rogues. We managed to trace her progress through the DRC to a port on the Congo River as she was sold by the rogues to human traffickers, but lost them when they bypassed the port in Angola and we had no idea what other ports they might choose to put in at, so we had no choice but to come home. Now, during the progress of the mission we did capture the rogue leader and interrogate him," he wisely didn't mention who had actually done the interrogating, "And learned through a combination of the information he gave and some of Cam's knowledge as a former victim of human trafficking herself that Shana would be taken to Amsterdam to be sold because it would be too dangerous for the slavers to sell her in Africa, she's too distinctive.

"We tried talking to the FBI, of which Shana, though an Army officer, is a member of and maintains her clearance with; however, our efforts to go through official channels to find her have been hampered by the somewhat negative viewpoint Homeland Security has of her capture. Their position is that she has possibly defected and that her training and skills make her a potential threat should she choose to offer those skills to an organization or group whose interests run counter to the US or its allies."

Don snorted. "Like that's likely." This brought a faint ghost of a smile to Cam's face.

"So the reason why we're pursuing this now is that one, Mr. Yu has gotten away with this long enough. We brought back one of his clients, a man named Maxwell Stuart. Mr. Stuart exited the office just before John walked in it and we heard enough of the conversation to suspect that Mr. Yu had arranged a trip overseas for the purpose of underage sex tourism. He's now cooling his heels in jail." Alex smiled, and it wasn't a nice one, but she sobered immediately. "The other reason we moved on him now is because he is 'in' on the human trafficking trade. Since we've given up on finding Shana through official channels, we're going to try now to find her through unofficial ones. That plan involves inserting Cam into the slave trade underground so she can move around, find Shana, and signal us for a retrieval. But in order to do that we need to have Mr. Yu's cooperation to insert Cam. The only way to get in is through someone already in, I believe that's how Cam put it." Cam nodded slightly.

Don put the ledger down, looked at it for long moments. "I can't say that I'm entirely happy with it, but I also remember," he nodded to Cam, "What you said about it being a win-win situation. I don't think so; I can see a hundred ways for this to go wrong and a lot of them aren't pretty, and in the end I think this is going to cost you a lot more than you expect it will now." Cam started to say something, but he held up his hand for silence. "Let me finish. I can see you're a very stubborn young woman, and having been through this once I believe that you know, better than anyone else here, what going undercover like this is going to involve. I also believe that you believe that your plan is the best one, and for that, I guess I'm willing to go with my detectives and my ADA on this one." He stopped speaking as they heard a tap on the door. "Come in."

It was Amanda Rollins' blond head that poked in around the doorframe. "I was looking for—o=h, there you are, Alex," she said. "I'm sorry to disturb—"

"Not at all, we're all friends here and we're all interested in the same thing," Alex said quickly before anyone else could reply. "What did you find out?"

"I want to scrub my brain," Rollins said with a face that spoke eloquently of her disgust. "We found shoeboxes full of photographs, photo albums with pictures, and the Computer Crimes section is going through his computer pulling a huge library of violent child porn off his hard drive. I haven't been here long but I have to say that definitely has to qualify among the biggest stashes of child porn I've ever seen." Her eyes roved over the assembled people and stopped short as she looked at Cam. Disgust turned to horror as she croaked, "It was you. You were in the movies and pictures."

"I knew he kept pictures. He had movies too?"

"The movies were stored on his hard drive." Rollins said, her face going slightly pale.

"My aunt and uncle kept me captive in an upstate New York mountain cabin that Mr. Yu owned. Then he arranged for clients to pay to come and molest me." Cam's voice was flat, even. "It was a long time ago and there is nothing that can be done now. But at least you have him and you can get him on trafficking and porn charges."

"Do we want to go talk to Mr. Yu again, now that he knows we've got him beyond a reasonable doubt?"

Cam rose from her seat, flashing Alex a nasty, cold smile. "Yes, let's go talk to him."

Mr. Yu looked up from his sitting position at the table in the interrogation room. One look at Alex's icy eyes and Cam's cold smile seemed to alert him that something was wrong, because he suddenly looked a little apprehensive.

"Oh, nervous, are we?" Cam leaned forward and Alex sat back, willing to let Cam take the lead, as she had when they had interrogated Zimurinda the second time in the Congo. "The detectives just got done tossing your place. Found some photo albums with very interesting pictures in it…really interesting. Quite the collector, aren't you?" She made a face. "How many pictures of me got out there on the internet? How many movies did my Aunt and Uncle send you of what those monsters did to me? You sick son of a bitch, how the hell could you sit there and watch that? I was fifteen!"

Her display of anger seemed to unnerve Leo Yu a little more. Alex had to admire her courage and her ability to read people. If they'd remained calm, he wouldn't have looked that nervous, but seeing her furious face, hearing the anger in her voice, and the realization that somewhere down there he did deserve her yelling at him all seemed to combine to make him a bit more anxious.

"I—I just looked at the stuff they gave me—I put it out there for the clients, they pay a lot of money for those videos—and it wasn't my fault, I didn't make those movies, your aunt and uncle did so it's their fault, not mine. I swear." He sounded truly frightened. "I'm sorry—I'm sorry."

"Seriously. You're sorry?" Cam laid her hands flat on the tabletop, pinned him with a hard stare. "Prove it. One of my friends has been kidnapped by human traffickers and is on her way to the Amsterdam slave market from Africa. I need you to get me in."

The man's jaw dropped. "In? You want to go into the slave markets to get her out?" A crafty look came to his eye. "So I get to take you to Amsterdam in cuffs and chains in exchange for my freedom?"

"Absolutely not," Alex cut in. "There will be no freedom for you, Mr. Yu, no matter what you do. It's simply not possible. But I will cut a deal with you, if you help us out I'll reduce the sentence I'll ask the courts for cooperation—and I'll recommend leniency from the federal court."

"No federal court."

It took a moment for that to sink in, and then Alex exploded. "What?"

"No federal court." He looked like a crocodile who had just swallowed a large, tasty meal. "No federal court."

"Hey, I haven't even told you want I want you to do," Cam snapped after a slashing glance at Alex. "Two of my other friends will pose as handlers for a mythical master, taking me to the Amsterdam market to sell me because he's tired of me. The only thing we want from you is letters of introduction, documents that will prove their identity and provide a cover for their entry into the market. You're not leaving jail. Not once. I know there are more children out there than just me, I know there's probably a lot of victims out there like me and they aren't all here in this country. And not many of them will be as lucky to escape as I was. So take it."

"I want federal immunity." He was smiling now, a cocky, smug, self-assured smile that Alex had to suppress the urge to slap off his face. "You arrested me on tax fraud and human trafficking. Those are federal crimes. You grant me federal immunity and I'll help you out, that way I only face State child porn charges, I'll be out in four years. That's the maximum penalty, isn't it?" he grinned.

Alex took a breath to say something, but Cam put a hand on her arm. "Alex can't make that kind of decision, she has to consult with her boss first."

"I'll get back to you tomorrow." Alex snapped, and then steered Cam out of the room.

She didn't say anything to the younger woman until they were back in Don's office, then she burst out, "Son of a bitch. He had this planned. He knew exactly what to do if he was ever caught, he knew exactly what he was going to say and how he was going to weasel out of this!"

"Is what he said true? Can you give him immunity and make sure the Feds don't prosecute him?"

"Yes, I can, but Cam, that's not the point!" Alex was furious; her eyes turned to blue fire and her cheeks flamed. "I can't do it. Doing this will only give him four years in jail for you, for the pain and suffering you went through, all the pain and suffering he's caused countless victims all over the world. I can't let him off that easy, Cam, I can't! I believe in honor and justice and fairness, and this is not honorable, just, or fair!"

"Shana is your friend too!" Cam lost her temper. "Shana is your friend too, you knew her longer than you've known me. Where is the honor and fairness and justice for her? Without him we might as well just hold a funeral now for her and get a death certificate! This plan is the only way we're going to get her back. You really think those DHS suits are going to put any effort into finding her at all? If you think that, then—"

"_Ladies!_" Don Cragen's voice thundered through the room, effectively ending the argument between the two. Cam had never heard Don get angry, so for her it was unexpected—Alex had heard him get angry before, but never like this. "Let's put him in a holding cell and cool him down, you can talk to him in Central Booking later. In fact, let me recommend that you talk to him tomorrow, give both of you time to cool off and regroup. Gunnery Sergeant, I recommend that you take your people back to your base before you're caught out after curfew; I know it's getting late, and you don't want to get in trouble. Besides, having this many soldiers in my squadroom is drawing more attention than I really want to have to deal with right now." His tone brooked no argument.

Alex was about to follow the soldiers out of the room but Cragen stopped her. "Alex. This is going to rest with you, I'm pretty sure that DA Cutter is going to leave it up to your discretion. You're reserve military, you've worked with and served with these soldiers, even went on a couple of missions with them if I'm not mistaken, so you have a better idea what their capabilities are than even I would have. So, in your opinion, if you think they really can pull this off, then go ahead and do what you think you have to."

"I don't want to do this, Don." Alex said, unable to hide the frustrated tone of her voice from Don Cragen, the man who had been a surrogate father since she'd joined the SVU over a decade ago. "I don't want to give him a free pass!"

"Then don't. Find a loophole. You are the best there is at what you do, and I trust that you're going to be able to make this work."

His confidence in her and her abilities made her smile. "I wish I had that much confidence in me, Don."

"Then you need to think better of yourself, Alex. Because I always have." She took his smile with her as she reluctantly left.


	11. Chapter 35: Prosecution Strategy

**Chapter 35: Prosecution Strategy**

She took all the evidence with her as she went back to the apartment she'd been sharing with Olivia since she'd come back from the Congo. At first it had been strange, sharing space with someone else—she had never had a roommate before-but over the last few months she'd grown used to hearing Olivia moving around in her room, got used to seeing her clothes tossed carelessly over the back of the couch when she came back in from a late night and all she could think about was to get some sleep. She'd even liked their friendly arguments over whatever the current case was; no matter what they argued about professionally, they never let it get in the way of their personal friendship.

But now Liv was at the Staten Island base awaiting Auggie's birth with Clayton, and for the moment, at least, the apartment was all hers. She fixed herself a quick dinner and then spread out her paperwork at the kitchen table to work on until Ettienne got back from dropping Cam and Charlie back off at base.

For a while she just sat and filled out forms and other minutia, trying to let her mind settle and clear of all the emotional turmoil of the last few days. The entire summer, in fact; with the New Year only a few days away, she could look back on the year in retrospect and admit that she wasn't the same person she'd been exactly a year ago. A year ago she'd been filing papers at the ICC offices, preparing for the trip out to the Congo at General Clancy's behest, and worrying so much she'd stopped having her period. Now here she was, one year later, and she had survived the Congo (and sworn she'd never go back) become part of a classified military project, had a lover who was also part of that project (and the most wonderful, lovable, exasperating man she could ever have imagined!) and a whole new circle of friends completely separate from the (admittedly boring) humdrum life at the New York District Attorney's office.

And she also had scars as a reminder of that year, scars that would never go away. Not only on her mind and memory, but also on her body as well. She'd given a little thought to having them removed, but some tentative research on methods and success rates had made her shy away from the idea. She didn't want to go through any more pain, God, she'd had enough for an entire lifetime, and really, it wasn't bothering her. It wasn't like most people ever saw that much of her skin, it wasn't that hard to avoid backless dresses, and as her tan, acquired under the African sun, faded, the scars faded to white on her arms became almost indistinguishable from her regular fair skin. Ettienne didn't care—in fact, if he was around after a shower he would have her stretch out on her bed face down and rub the scar-reducing lotion all over her back; the calluses on his hands provided a delightful contrast to the softness of her skin, and he enjoyed doing this for her as much as she enjoyed having him do it. And of course, those sessions usually turned into foreplay…

And as if her thoughts had conjured the man, she heard a key in the door lock and moments later the front door of the apartment opened as he slipped inside. She and Olivia had agreed a few months back to give the guys access into the apartment and had extra keys made. Now she looked up from the table and gave him a warm smile. "Hey. Dropped Cam and Charlie off?"

"Yes. Charlie got on her a little bit about losing her temper with you, that you were just trying to do your job and the whole situation was difficult. She asked me to tell you that she was sorry she lost her temper."

"I'm sorry for losing mine with her too." She lifted her face up to his for a kiss, then took a deep sniff. "Hey, is that…"

"I thought you might be hungry." He gave her a mischievous grin as he pulled the paper bag he'd been hiding behind his back. "I figured after I dropped you off you'd probably stick a frozen dinner in the microwave and eat that while working, but that's not a proper dinner for someone who works as hard as you do. Especially as you still need to gain some weight back after the Congo fiasco."

"'Tienne, my weight is fine. I'm supposed to gain it back gradually, and I have to put on muscle as I'm gaining the body fat too if I want to stay in shape enough to keep up with Shana's workouts…" her voice trailed off as they thought about their absent friend. "God, I miss her."

"We all do," Ettienne said firmly as he pushed aside some of the papers on the table and put two plates down, then grabbed silverware from the drawer. "Eat first. Work later."

Although the smell from her favorite restaurant was making her stomach growl despite the frozen dinner she'd had just an hour and a half earlier, she still felt it necessary to protest. "'Tienne, I'm in the middle of something here."

"Don't care." And he proved it by putting her plate in the middle of the form she was filling out. "Eat. If you don't stay healthy, Alex, the work won't get done."

"You know, you can be so annoyingly practical sometimes, you know that?" She slid her papers out from under her plate, then reached for a fork.

He grinned at her as he opened containers and dumped dirty rice, Cajun beans, and _andouille _on her plate. "That's why you love me."

"That's one of the reasons why I love you." She started to eat.

By unspoken agreement they didn't talk about the case. "I used to love this restaurant until I tasted you cook the same thing here at home. Now, even though it says it's the same thing, I think of your cooking as 'the way it's supposed to taste'."

Ettienne thought about that for a moment, then said, "Is that female for 'I like your cooking better'?"

Alex started to laugh, then nearly choked on a bit of rice and had to hastily take a sip of water. "Yes, that's what it means."

"Oh." He looked solemn as he returned his attention to his food, but his eyes twinkled. "In that case I'll take it as a compliment."

She threw a napkin at him, which he caught out of midair with a simpering smile. "Why thank you."

They finished their meal laughing.

She was still chuckling as she carried her dishes to the sink a couple minutes later, and with the physical hunger sated, suddenly another hunger awakened when she felt his hand brush the back of her arm, felt his hot breath on the nape of her neck as he kissed the top of her spine. Arching into his lips, she completely forgot about the dishes, the leftovers, and her paperwork as she followed him to the second bedroom. It had been the first time since they'd gotten back from the Congo that they'd been able to be alone, and they took full advantage of the privacy…

She left Ettienne in her bedroom watching TV and returned to the kitchen table and the paperwork spread out on it. Although she felt reluctant to come back, a part of her just wanting to stay in bed curled up with 'Tienne, another part of her knew she'd have to finish this first.

She sat down with a sigh, forcing herself to concentrate on the paperwork, and the evidence in front of her_. I shouldn't have lost my temper with Cam. She's under enough stress as it is, what with Shana's disappearance, her offer, and the strain of having to deal with facing her trafficker in the interrogation room. Just looking at this ledger and seeing all these names and the dollar amounts paid to her aunt and uncle had to have been difficult._ She picked up the ledger, thumbed through it again. _I'll never look at fishing gear in a store in quite the same way. And hiking._ She paused, the ledger sitting open on the last page. _For procurement services. How sick is that. Like she were a prostitute, and he was a pimp, except she didn't do it willingly…_

It hit her then like a ton of bricks, and she stared stupidly at the ledger page for a long time as her mind raced, then she grabbed a law book and started flipping through it, looking for the applicable statutes. _Pimp. Prostitute. Child prostitute. That's it. H__e asked for federal immunity because he thinks if he's tried in Manhattan he can only be charged with possession of child porn; in order to get him on child molestation charges he would have had to 'engage in at least two acts of sexual conduct with a child under age 13 over a period of three months'. Cam's the only victim we have and she was 15 at the time she was whisked away to that mountain cabin. The penalty for possession of child porn in New York State court is four years!_

_In a federal court he would be looking at between 5-14 years for the child porn alone, plus another 10 years to life for sex trafficking of a minor, 15 years to life for sex trafficking by force for a total minimum penalty of 30 years and a maximum penalty of life. That's why he asked for federal immunity, because he thinks if the feds can't get their hands on him, he can only be convicted of child porn!_

_Unless…unless I change the charges. Unless I hit him with additional charges. Child porn, we have the child porn. The ledger—if we can prove that some of the names in here are clients that he handled and dealt with, we can prove chain of custody for responsibility; we can prove that he procured these clients for the purposes of raping Cam!_

Ettienne strolled into the kitchen, gloriously naked; she definitely noticed but was too focused on finding the references she needed to comment on it. He noticed and came over to her, peering over her shoulder. "What's up? I see that look in your eye."

"I think I have him. I think we can do this." She was flipping through law books and paperwork, finally finding the one she was looking for. "Listen to this. 'A 2007 human trafficking law in New York State makes it a felony for someone to knowingly sell "travel-related services to facilitate prostitution"."

He frowned. "Cam wasn't a prostitute."

"No, but she was forced into it and the payments Yu received clearly were, in Cam's Aunt and Uncle's own handwriting, designated as 'payment for procurement services'. If the detectives can find some of the clients in this ledger in Yu's client files, we can prove chain of custody—from the client's contact with Yu to the cabin where Cam was molested to the money that was wired back to Yu for procuring that client. Facilitating the forcing of a young girl into prostitution would be included in that felony sex trafficking offense, and the penalty for that is 3-25 years."

"I guess I know how much time you'll ask for," he said wryly.

Alex flashed him a quick grin and continued reading from the document in her hand. "Now since she was under the age of 18 at the time she was forced into prostitution, I can also charge him with 'sex trafficking of a child by force', that has a minimum penalty of 15 years, a maximum penalty of life; I can also charge him with 'transportation of minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity', that has a minimum of a fine+10 years, a maximum penalty of life. And there's also 'travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct ' since he did engage in at least one sexual act with Cam before she burned the house down, and that's at minimum a fine, a maximum of thirty years."

Ettienne grinned. "So here he thinks he's ducked out of the possibility of life in federal prison, only to find that suddenly he's being charged with every last crime in the New York State law books that you can think of. What's the maximum penalty of all those charges combined?"

"Two life sentences plus thirty years."

"And I guess I don't have to ask whether you're going to go for the maximum here."

"No, you don't." Alex was scribbling notes on a legal pad. "However, I do have two questions to ask you."

"Anything." His breath was warm on the back of her neck.

"One. Please don't say anything about this to anyone. I know there are going to be some people who are going to be furious with me for agreeing to a deal that guarantees him federal immunity but I have to get a warrant for the detectives to pull Yu's client files from the travel agency. Once I match the names in his files with the names in this ledger it'll be a done deal. It actually pretty much is already because we all know that he's the reason these people even knew about Cam, but I want a rock-solid case. And I don't want him getting wind of this little strategy—I want him to think we're giving him exactly what he wants so we can get what we need. I'm not going to spring this little trap on him until we know if insertion is a success and his information was sound. I'm pretty sure that the detectives are going to figure it out when they see the names of the files I'm going to ask them to find, and when I ask them to start arresting every single one of those clients for rape and whatever else I can come up with."

"Can do. What's the second question?" He nuzzled the back of her neck, causing her breath to catch in her throat.

In response, she reached for the apron draped casually over the back of her chair and handed it to him. "Can you please put this on? Just for now. Just until I finish taking these notes. Then you can take it off. You are…rather distracting."

His roar of laughter filled the kitchen.


	12. Chapter 36:Operation Strategy

**Chapter 36: Operation Strategy**

"You're not going to give this piece of crap Federal immunity?" DA Cutter looked at Alex enquiringly over his desk, then saw her face. "Oh my God, you are."

"It's the only way I can see that we're going to get the information we need to go and rescue the US Army soldier who disappeared. He's in, he's been 'in' the trade for a while now and so he'll be recognized and his credentials accepted. We have to move, and quickly—we're coming up on the end of the fourth week this soldier has been missing and we all know that people who fight tend not to make a good slave. It's only a matter of time before whoever has her decides she isn't worth the time and trouble and just kills her."

"If they haven't already."

Alex took a deep breath. "I'm willing to take that chance and so is the soldier who is going undercover to find her."

Cutter's head snapped up sharply, as she'd known it would; she hadn't mentioned Cam yet during this conversation. "A soldier is going undercover? What the hell is going on here, Alexandra?"

"She's the one who gave us the ledger with Yu's name in it. She was the child who Yu made arrangements for all these clients to come and rape."

"Jesus." Cutter stared at the ledger. "You would think she would be the last one to offer to go back in."

"Cam Arlington, despite her past and the horrific abuse she suffered as a child, has grown into an incredibly confident, selfless, caring individual. The soldier who disappeared is her best friend, the first female best friend she's ever had in 25 years of life. Cam is also the only person who could successfully pull this off; she knows how to act, how to behave, what to say and what to do. It is a miracle that she's even offering, and at this point we're all so desperate to get Shana back that we're willing to consider this wild plan."

Cutter sighed. "I'm not going to say that I approve of this, but at the same time, I can't see any flaws. Whichever way her rescue operation goes, we have a lynchpin to a ring of pedophiles in our hands and the possibility of many more thanks to the ledger and the suspect's files." He sighed. "Go ahead."

"Thank you."Alex let out the breath she was holding and turned toward the door.

"…Alex?" Cutter stopped hr in mid-stride and she turned to him. He smiled at her and said, "Please tell this soldier, Cam Arlington—thank you, from my office, for being willing to share this and being willing to testify. Tell her I personally wish her luck and I hope that she's successful and comes back. Not just for purposes of prosecuting the case but also because I admire her courage and conviction."

"I'll tell her that, thank you." Alex left.

"What's this?" Rollins looked up from the cup of coffee she was nursing at her desk as Alex put the blue warrant form on top of it. Signed, of course, by Judge Petrovsky, who had harangued Alex for 'going on a fishing expedition' but had signed the warrant once Alex explained that while the real reason for seizing the travel agents' files was to match the client names to the names in the ledger. They could legally claim they were trying to get a feel for how big his client file actually was so that he could be charged with tax evasion. She grudgingly admitted the legality of this and signed the warrant.

"It's a search-and-seizure warrant for Leo Yu's client files. I can't explain why I need them now, but if you could keep a particular eye out for names that match the ones in Cam's ledger…"

Rollins's eyes lit up. "You want to prove that Leo Yu did indeed procure these clients for Cam's relatives. So if they're in Yu's files AND they're listed in the ledger, you can arrest them for pedophilia and you can get him on procurement."

Alex had to smile at how quickly the blond detective had picked up on that. She hadn't been quite sure when Rollins and Amaro had come on, after Elliot's abrupt departure, how they were going to work out, but she had come to admit that while Rollins didn't have the same empathy for the victims that Liv did, she was quick-thinking and intelligent and an asset to the SVU team. "Once you have the client files that match the names in Cam's ledger, start investigating each one. If there are as many as I think there are going to be, we might have a huge pedophilia ring and that's going to be a high profile case, so make sure the chain of custody and every single scrap of evidence you get is completely inarguable and irreproachable."

"And what are you going to be doing?"

"Giving Yu the deal he wants for federal immunity."

Charlie and Cam met Alex at Riker's.

She told them only that she was going to give Yu the deal he wanted for federal immunity; she said nothing about her eventual plans, which right now would be confined to Etienne and the squad. Although they were military, and thus good at keeping secrets, she felt a perverse little imp urging her to keep silent. She had only been 'military' for a half year, and already it felt like forever. She was entitled to a few secrets with the SVU!

"Thank you," Cam said quietly, but Alex felt the heartfelt sincerity in her remark, and she again wondered at the turn of events that had taken an ordinary young woman through hell and spit her out on the other side as such a selfless, giving person. She had to have known there was a chance she wouldn't come back from it but it wasn't making a difference to her determination to go.

Yu looked up, and Alex's face must have been transparent because he smiled at her. "You got me my immunity."

Smug bastard. "Yes, I did. You have immunity and so you'll only be charged now with possession of child porn, which carries a maximum sentence of four years. Which you know very well."

"Yes, I did." He grinned and she again had to resist the urge to slap that smug grin off his face. The only thing that kept her was the knowledge of the little trap she was constructing for him.

"Well now that you have what I want, you give us what we want." Cam placed her hands flat on the table, stared at him penetratingly. "How do I get into the Amsterdam market?"

"You'll have to have someone take you there." Yu relaxed, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. "You know perfectly well a slave can't just walk in. Someone has to take you. You'll be dressed, as all slaves are, in nothing once you get inside. Except your collar and leash." He leaned forward. "You do remember what that felt like, right? That leather wrapped around your throat…"

Alex gritted her teeth; Cam had winced, albeit imperceptibly. "Get on with it. Can you provide a cover identity?"

"Hmm." Yu sat back, his eyes going briefly unfocused. "There's a client who used to operate in the New York area, owned several house slaves. One was an Asian sex slave—he had a thing for Asians. Most of the slaves sold to him came back a few years later perfectly trained." He cocked his head, looked at Cam. "Are you scarred or damaged in any way? Did any of the clients scar you? The last time I was at the cabin you were skinny but no noticeable scars except the ones the last client put on you –the cigarette burns on —"

"Yes I remember that very well." Cam spoke over him harshly, drowning out the rest of his words. "Yes, I'm scarred. The fire that burned the cabin took…" she took a deep breath, and her hands curled into white-knuckled fists on the table. "It took a breast and scarred me from my chest to my knees." Alex winced—that had to be hard, telling her molester what had happened to her.

Yu grimaced—actually grimaced. "You must look horrible under your clothes. And you're actually married?" He'd noticed the thin gold band around her finger. "Your husband must have a pretty strong stomach."

Alex's mouth dropped open as tears filled Cam's eyes. The calculated rudeness stunned and angered her, but before she could say anything, the door to the interrogation room flew open and Charlie stepped in.

His face was dark with rage as he took two huge steps across the room, grabbed the front of Yu's jumpsuit and hauled him bodily out of the chair. What he growled at the man wasn't a language Alex recognized, but the anger, and the threat under the syllables, was clear.

"Charlie." Cam had gotten control of herself. "Let him go."

He said something to her in the same language. She said something back. He let Yu go, almost slamming the man down in the chair, and stomped from the room.

Cam steeled herself, lacing her fingers tightly under the table; Alex saw her hands shaking. "Tell me who this former client was."

"You met him. He came because he wanted to see you, get a feel for you so he could buy you when you got old enough." Alex had to fight not to curl her hands into fists. This was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do, sit here and listen to horrible details that should never be made public; it should have stayed in the past so Cam could live a normal life. "He came with Ritchie Curry, you know, the one who liked—"

"Keep your language clean, Mr. Yu," Alex snapped harshly, her voice raspy with anger. "What was his name?"

"Alan Singletary." Yu evidently figured if he kept needling Cam about her past the interview could end right there. And he was obviously enjoying seeing her reactions to his comments, the sadistic son of a bitch. Alex was keeping hold of her temper by a tenuous thread.

Cam's face was expressionless, a sure sign that she was keeping hold of her emotions by a thread too. "So I'll go in as a slave that's been used up by Singletary, and the handlers that will go in with me will be his staff. Is there any documentation needed as proof that he owns me or that the handlers are really his?"

Yu laughed. "Alan Singletary is so well-known in slave trade circles that just the mention of his name will inspire respect. Trust me, you and your handlers won't have any problems—as long as the handlers are white. Alan thinks minorities are inferior species—he just tolerates me because I arrange his trips to Amsterdam so he can get what he wants."

"Are there any details that the handler needs to know about him, his estate, his persuasions and leanings?"

"He likes Asian women. He likes pain. His slaves are usually perfectly trained but when he decides he's tired of them, when he sends them to be sold he'll scar them so severely that they only thing they're good for is meat afterwards." He smirked. "Not like you're going to have a problem with that, if your scarring is extensive as you said. Can I look?"

Alex had it. There was no way she was going to let that happen. "This conversation's over. Guard!" She knocked on the door, and the guard opened it. Cam followed her out wordlessly.

Charlie was waiting just outside, and he wrapped his arms around her as she melted into his embrace. He spoke to her softly, too softly for Alex to hear, but she didn't really want to; she stepped a bit away from them to give them privacy as Cam cried into Charlie's shoulder.

But not for long. Soon she sniffed, rubbed her eyes, and turned to Alex. "Thank you, Alex. I mean it. If or when I get back, if I can testify against him I will. So you can close the case."

"I'll hold you to that." Alex smiled as she watched them walk off down the hallway toward the door together.

"All right. So far this has worked according to Polaris' plan. White Queen used the ledger to track him down, you got what you needed to successfully infiltrate the slave market, and he's now sitting in jail. And, also as you predicted, there has been no word through any official channels on Shana's whereabouts, not even a sighting."

Hawk sat at the head of the conference table, looking at his assembled personnel. Liv had been having false contractions and Doc ordered her to stay in bed, so she wasn't here at the moment; but Lady Jaye, Duke, Flint, Hawk, Polaris, and Spirit were here. Snake Eyes was here too, at least physically, but he'd come in, sat down silently, hadn't signed a single word. He hardly blinked. His body might have been there but the rest of him was somewhere else entirely; Hawk wasn't even sure the man had left Shana's room at all the last few days. Was he eating? Sleeping? Even breathing?

"I've been doing a lot of thinking about this plan, and while I don't see any better options for getting Shana back, and as much as I want her back, I am not willing to sacrifice another soldier to do so. So I am going along with this up to a point. Polaris."

Polaris snapped to attention halfwa6y down the table. "How were you going to signal to us that you found her?"

"I'm going to keep moving through the circles until I do. It doesn't take that long for one slave to figure out who the slaves are in the owner's particular circle; the owners like showing off new acquisitions. So whoever buys me in the market will want to make the rounds and show me off and I will know within a week whether Shana's in the particular circle I'm in. When I do find her I'll stick to her—anyone who owns a slave who looks like her is going to need to keep damaged meat around. If she's fighting him he can't beat her to relieve his frustration so he needs to have meat around to beat and hurt and damage." Her voice was even. "So when my tracer stops moving for two weeks, I am either going to be dead or I will be alive and with her. I won't stop until I find her."

"The tracer that Alex wore had a transponder signal—since the receiving wire was so close to one of the major arteries in her inner ear, it could pick up her pulse. I'm sure our techs can rework that chip to send one kind of steady signal if she's alive and a different signal if she—if her heart stops." Lady Jaye winced at the thought.

"Excellent idea. Good. All right, Polaris, we'll come and get you once your tracer stops for two weeks and you're still alive. If you die, we'll come and get you too…wherever you are. I promise it." His tone was fiercely determined. "If we get word that Shana's been found through official channels, we're coming to get you no matter where you are and what you're doing." She nodded. "I'm also going to put a time limit on this mission. If your tracker says you're alive but you still haven't found her at the end of a month, no matter where you are in the world you're coming back."

She started to protest, and he held up a hand. "No. I know it's your plan and it looks like it's the only one that's going to work as regards bringing Shana home, I am not going to sacrifice both of you in order to do it. If you haven't found her at the end of a month you're coming home." His voice broke as he said quietly, "Jesus, Cam, this is going to be hard enough on you already. I don't think even you really know how difficult this is going to be and I do NOT want you to go through any more hell than you have already. And you're forgetting something—you have a husband who needs you."

"Snake Eyes needs Shana." All eyes turned involuntarily to the black-clad monolith sitting at the end of the table, and Hawk nodded in sympathy.

"I know that. But I am not going to sacrifice two soldiers. One is enough." He stood with an air of finality. "Make whatever arrangements you need to and let me know when you want to fly out to Amsterdam ."

"Two days," Cam said firmly, and all eyes turned to her. "Two days. It'll be a quick trip for whoever comes with me, just drop me off and go home."

"Who's going to be going with you as your 'handlers'?"

Lady Jaye strapped some steel to her spine and squared her shoulders. "I'm an expert in languages. I'll be able to understand a great deal of what is said at the Amsterdam market, I'll be in a position to overhear a great deal, and maybe this whole thing will be a moot point, if we hear someone talking about her we won't have to leave Cam there and we can all go home."

"I'm going," Duke said firmly. "After Allie I know the most about languages and I know a few that she doesn't. And maybe a male presence will keep anyone from thinking they can take…liberties." Flint's scowl got even deeper at that thought.

"Okay. Duke, Lady Jaye, and Polaris. You all will be leaving on a flight out in two days. Pack your bags and make whatever arrangements you need to make."

The conference room started to empty, but Cam gave Charlie a quick smile and then walked over to Duke and Allie. "Before we leave I have to make sure you know how to treat me," she said. "So I guess I'll meet you in the Girls Only workout room in an hour?"

"What do you mean, make sure we know how to treat you?" Duke asked her suspiciously.

Cam sighed. "If you're going to pass for slave handlers then you have to act the part. You have to look at me and see property, not a friend and a fellow soldier. You have to treat me as property, a doll, a thing to be used and discarded. Not as a person, a living breathing being with feelings. You don't talk to me, you talk at me. You have to talk about me like I'm not even there when I'm standing next to you.

"They're going to ask for a display of the merchandise before they buy me away from you. So I'm either going to have to demonstrate my skills on one of you—"

"No. No!" Allie shook her head vehemently. "I can't do that."

"Me either." Conrad winced. "Is all of that really going to be necessary?"

"Yes it is because we have to be convincing. You have to be convincing. I can play my part—I've been there before, after all…but if you two aren't convincing none of us is going to make it out of there alive. You'll be killed, and if they don't kill me right away, well…" She swallowed, and Allie detected fear in the back of her eyes. "I will never see an owner. I'll never see the light of day again. They'll kill me slowly, just use me up until there's nothing left. I'll never even be able to start looking for Shana." She looked at them pleadingly. "This part of the operation is going to depend on your acting skills."

"Fine." Allie gritted her teeth. "Meet us in the workout room in an hour."

"Thank you, Allie," Cam said quietly, and was gone.

Conrad watched her hurry to where Snake Eyes was trudging slowly out of the conference room, after having had a quick word with Hawk; Cam intercepted him by the door, stopped him, said something; he looked dully at her for a moment, then gave her a simple nod, a quick jerk of the head, and she left the room with him; Charlie, Allie and Conrad watched them go.

"Snake Eyes hasn't been the same without Shana. I just…never realized just how much he depends on her. I don't think he realized how much he depended on her until this happened. If this plan doesn't work, Conrad, and we don't find Shana…Snake Eyes is going to go rogue and he'll go find her himself."

"I was in the infirmary yesterday when Snake Eyes came in. His wrists had red lines around them and Doc thought he'd tried to cut his wrists. I didn't catch all of his signing, but apparently he said he had a nightmare about Shana wearing shackles that made her wrists bleed and when he woke up his wrists were bleeding too. Doc looked skeptical." Allie sighed. "All right, let's get going. I have some paperwork I have to finish up before we meet Cam in the workout room." They both left.

Neither Allie nor Conrad saw the startled look Charlie gave them, then the thoughtful gaze he gave toward the hallway down which Cam and Snake Eyes had disappeared. When he finally moved, it was with long purposeful strides toward his own quarters.


	13. Chapter 37: Difficult

**Chapter 37: Difficult**

Hawk stopped Snake Eyes just before he was about to leave. His face was sympathetic, but his words were firm. "Snake Eyes, I want you to understand. Shana is not only my soldier, but she's my friend, too. I miss her. I miss her more than you know. But I have a responsibility to everyone under my command, like Cam, and if she can't find Shana in a reasonable amount of time, I'm not willing to sacrifice her health, both physical and mental, and her safety. I don't know what going back into sexual slavery is going to do to her, psychologically and emotionally; I don't think even she knows herself, but I'm expecting it to be bad. Whether she comes back with Shana or not, she'll be back in six months. Her plan is a long shot and I can't even begin to predict how this will go."

Snake Eyes understood, although he couldn't empathize. Shana was everything to him, and the last three weeks without her had been absolute torture. Hell, he'd come to realize, wasn't where you went after you died; for him, hell was life without Shana beside him.

He'd never realized until now how much he loved her, needed her, depended on her. All those times when Flint and Allie had needled Shana and him about when they were going to settle down, get married, and he and Shana had scoffed, laughed, agreed that there was plenty of time for that, there was no rush. And although they'd both known, intellectually, that each time they went out could be the last time, it had never hit him until now. Not even when one of their enemies had shot her in the head; he'd been out of it and it had never really hit him.

But seeing Shana taken from him in the Congo , with him absolutely helpless to do anything about it, had dealt a blow to his confidence and certainty. And as the days went by, one after the other, with no sight or sign of Shana, his anguish grew, his regret that he hadn't made the most out of every single minute he'd ever had with her, hadn't done more of the things that she wanted to do. He looked back at all the free evenings they'd spent on base because he was too insecure and self-conscious to go out, worried about what other people might think or say about his scarred face; about the times when she'd sacrificed some little pleasure she could have had in consideration of his feelings, his wants, his desires. Not going to a rock concert for one of her favorite bands because he wouldn't go with her; not going on a bar crawl with Courtney and Wayne because he wouldn't; a few months ago there had been a movie that they had both wanted to see when it came out, but he'd balked at going to the theater with her. She'd coaxed, cajoled, pleaded, begged him to come with her, but he'd stood firm; he didn't want to go to a public theater with that many people, so when Court and Allie and Alex and Liv had gotten tickets and were taking Wayne, Dash, Ettienne and Clayton, he'd refused and Shana had declared that if he wasn't going, she wouldn't either.

And he'd seen Courtney slipping into her quarters with the movie, on DVD, a couple of days ago and it had hit him with a pang; that movie she had wanted so desperately to see was now out, but because of his selfishness, she'd missed it and now might never have a chance to see it. She could be dying now, or dead; over the last few nights his dreams had all been of a vague, formless darkness, of a heavy lassitude that weighed down his limbs and kept him from moving, a feeling like he was wrapped in thick cotton wool. He'd talked to Doc soon after the dream in which he'd woken to find his wrists bleeding in the exact same place Shana's had been, and although Doc hadn't come straight out and said 'you're nuts', his suggestion that Snake Eyes talk to Psyche-Out was hint enough.

But he couldn't shake the conviction that his dreams were more than that, that somehow he was able to feel a little of what she was feeling, and while knowing what was happening to her hurt, it was also his indicator that she was still alive. And as much as he hated the dreams, curling up in her bed after one and crying in sadness and loneliness and need for her, he was grateful for the knowledge that she was indeed still alive.

He'd barely understood what Cam was offering to do, initially; when he finally understood he was floored. Cam's past should have made her the last one to want to go into that kind of situation—but she was the first to volunteer to participate—it had even been her plan.

So when she intercepted him just as he was about to leave the conference room with a quiet, "I have a couple of questions for you," he gave her a simple nod and allowed her to precede him through the door into the hallway.

Over the last week whenever someone had stopped him in the hallway or offered to walk with him for a short distance, they would immediately start to fill the awkward silence with some platitude about how she would be all right, they would find her, and while he understood that they meant it and were telling him that as much for their comfort as his own, he had come to despise the words and had started to avoid people because he didn't want to hear them. Cam, however, did no such thing; their entire trip back to Shana's quarters was accomplished in silence, and as they go there and he was about to vanish inside and close the door, she said quietly, "I have a personal question I'd like to ask, but feel free not to answer it if you don't want to."  
He opened the door to Shana's quarters, hesitated, then swung it open wider and stepped inside. Cam followed him, taking a seat in the chair parked at the desk, still with the unfinished letter to Sean sitting atop it, the pen waiting in the exact same place.

"I need to know if Shana has any identifying marks on her by which I can identify her even if I can't see her face or her face is unrecognizable."

Snake Eyes stared at her, and she flinched but didn't back down. "We're soldiers and this is our best friend we're talking about. You know the reality as well as I do, I don't need to point this out to you." She took a deep breath. "In a slave market if a slave comes in with a very distinctive birthmark or tattoo, depending on the size they will either get rid of it by holding hot metal to the skin to literally brand it away or they will slide a knife under the skin and cut deeply enough to 'skin' that tattoo from the slave and remove it. But if the slave is an extraordinarily beautiful female, or for whatever reason fetches a very, very high price on the market, they will skip removal. That's why I want to, need to, know if Shana had a tattoo or any kind of very distinctive birthmark."

Snake Eyes thought for a minute, then went and sat down on Shana's bed, reaching for the bottom drawer of Shana's night table. Still silent, he passed the photo album he took from the drawer and handed it to Cam.

She opened it…and her mouth fell open. Shana. Pictures of Shana, in ways that Cam hadn't seen her before. Happy, laughing carefree, not a single trace of the stern drill sergeant façade she put on at Joe base. The setting was somewhere in the mountains somewhere; Cam saw what looked like a log cabin behind her, but in a modern, contemporary style. Shana stood in the doorway, laughing; Shana running barefoot through the meadow; Shana in a bikini stretched out asleep on a towel laid out in a wooden pier; Shana, standing in a white sweater and jeans in the middle of a snow covered meadow, snow falling thickly around her and her arms outstretched, laughing in the middle of the falling snow.

She turned the page, and saw pictures of Shana and Snake together. Some clearly taken at Joe base; lots of pictures of costume parties at clubs and locations that obviously allowed you to dress, Cam got the feeling it was probably at Halloween; a picture of Snake Eyes, shirtless, sprawled out on a couch at the cabin sound asleep. Little glimpses of the life he'd shared with her, a life he'd taken for granted until suddenly now it had ended, a life that he now realized had been tainted and limited by his own self-consciousness, one that he now regretted with every fiber of his being.

And then she turned the page and saw the photo he'd meant for her to see. A photo of two hips side by side, one Snake Eyes by the wisp of dark blond sandy hair at the left edge of the picture, the other Shana's by the deep auburn curls at the right edge of the picture. Two matching tattoos; Japanese Kanji characters surrounded by a Celtic knot, delicate strands interwoven between each other. "Yours is her name, and her tattoo is yours. You guys got matching tattoos on your hips?" a hint of exasperated humor in her voice at his nod. "Why haven't you gotten married yet?"

He shrugged, not having an answer for that. She saw the look in his eyes, softened. "I'm sorry. That wasn't a nice thing to say." He started to shake his head, to tell her it would be all right, but she stopped him by leaning forward to catch his attention. "I am going to make you a promise. It doesn't matter what Hawk said, that he'll bring me back in a month if I haven't found her yet. If she is still alive out there, if I don't find her this time I'll find some way to go out again. I won't stop looking for her until we know what happened to her, one way or another. I swear to you, Snake Eyes, I will find her." She closed the photo album. "Thank you for the picture. You'll know I have her when the transponder stops for two weeks, okay? Remember that. Hang onto that. I will do everything I can to protect her; she's not used to losing control like this, she's not used to pain, and I will try to take as much of that as I can so she won't have to until you guys find us. I swear it." She handed him the photo album and slipped quietly out of the room.

Allie crossed her arms and tapped her foot as Cam stepped into the workout room and closed the door, then locked it. "You said for us to meet you here in an hour. It's been a little more than that."

"It took me a little longer to get ready than I thought it would. It's been a long time." Cam's face was flushed as she put a duffel bag on the floor and unzipped it, then stood and in one smooth movement she skimmed off her fatigue pants and shrugged out of her fatigue top.

"No!" Allie yelped as Cam started to take off her underwear and bra. "Cam…"

"In order for us to pull this off you have to be used to what I look like. This is necessary." Duke and Allie watched silently as a now-naked Cam folded her fatigues and underclothing and set them in a neat pile to one side; then reached inside the duffel bag. "This is a collar. You need to know how to put this on."

Duke held up his hands. "Cam…no, I can't…"

Cam said tightly, "Duke. When you and Allie take me into the market, I'll have to be in this collar and on the end of this leash. When they decide to buy me you'll have to take this off so they can out theirs on. Put it on."

He took the collar from her, and she stood quietly, showing no sign of embarrassment at her nudity in front of them as she lifted her hair out of the way. "Pull the buckle tight behind it. The buckle has to be in back, with the D-ring in front for the leash to hook to. It should be tight enough that it won't slide around my neck, but not tight enough to constrict my breathing. Some Masters like the collar to be tighter—it keeps the slave's face flushed, but in this case if I need to move fast it can't constrict my breathing." She held up the leash. "Hook that to the d-ring on the collar."

Allie felt peculiar doing this; it seemed foreign, alien, and she felt dirty and uncomfortable. Cam didn't react, just waited until Allie was done, then took cuffs from out of the bag. "Ankle cuffs can be put on by the slave, but wrist cuffs are usually put on by the handler or owner or master. These were designed to hold the weight of a person, so they are very thick and wide and have heavy buckles. You'll have to make these tight because if the dealer asks for a demonstration they may be tested. I doubt it, but you never know, so the cuffs will have to be tight. If you look at the leather strips, you can see the place where my Uncle used to position the buckles. Just use them."

Duke's expression was getting darker and darker as he buckled the cuffs around her wrists, but he balked when Cam brought up the next item of equipment. "Cam, my God, no!"

Allie, too, sounded dismayed. "I do NOT want you walking through the streets of Amsterdam wearing that!"

Cam sighed. "This is not about what we want, it's about what we have to do to bring Shana back. You two have known Shana for longer than I have, why aren't you willing to do whatever it takes to bring her back? She was your friend longer than mine, but no one here, no one, is willing to do what it takes to get her back!" Her voice rose in anger, with an edge of hysteria. "You can't possibly think this is easy for me too. I nearly died doing this, I was ready to kill to get out of this life! But she is my friend and I owe her and I am willing to do everything that I can possibly do to help get her back and I don't understand why everyone here isn't willing to do the same!"

She threw down the item she'd been holding and stalked to the other side of the room, head bowed, and Allie and Duke watched her go, slightly stunned. She rarely ever lost her temper with anyone, and the fact that she had done so now meant she had to be under a lot of stress indeed.

Her scars stared back at them, a mute reminder of just what she had been through, of how much all of this knowledge had cost her. And Allie felt a niggling little feeling of guilt as she crossed the room and touched Cam's arm. "Cam. I'm sorry. I—we—know how much this cost you and we know how it hurts. And we're very, very fortunate to have you with us, to have you willing to use this hard-won knowledge to help us get Shana back. We just…we really didn't think it was going to be quite so hard. We can't even imagine some of the things you must have gone through, and a lot of what you've told us…I don't know how to act that way, Cam, neither Duke nor I do."

"I understand that I really do. But if we want to make this work, we have to." Cam scrubbed at her tear-damp eyes. "Come on."

She picked up that particular piece of equipment again, and Allie and Duke both swallowed down their revulsion enough to listen to what she was telling them. "When we get there the dealer is going to ask for a demonstration of my skills. Since you both said I'm not going to be demonstrating those on either of you—"

"Cam, please understand—I can't, the very thought of you forced to to—do that—to either one of us is repugnant."

Cam nodded. "So I'm going to be wearing this harness. It can either be used as an excuse for why I'm not available—Master Singletary wants me to be uncomfortable for the trip—or it'll prepare me for the possibility of the dealer wanting to try me out."

"He's going to…right in front of us?" Duke shook his head. "Cam—I can't."

"You can and you have to. You are Master Singletary's handlers, getting rid of another used-up slave. You don't care what I look like, you don't care what happens to me, I'm a paper plate that's been used and now just needs to be tossed out, a tissue taken from a box, used to blow your nose on, and thrown away. A thing, property, chattel. Damaged and useless and worthless chattel. Normally the handler uses themselves to demonstrate the slave's worth; in this case, you can say that after what Master Singletary did, scarring me and running me, neither of you find me attractive anymore and you're repulsed by me.

"At that point the dealer is probably going to demand that I demonstrate. So I'll have to perform for him—most likely let him have sex with me, or give him oral, and then he'll test my obedience. After which he'll give you whatever he thinks I'm worth, you'll go on your way, and I'll be taken to the slaves' area—and that's where I'll start looking for Shana. I'll keep my eyes and ears open and I'll find her."

"This whole thing sounds brutal and unbelievable. I can't believe stuff like this goes on today, it sounds like barbarians in the dark ages." Duke said angrily.

"In today's world where anyone can start with nothing and become a billionaire, where you can have anything you want if you only have enough money, the ultimate status symbol is having enough money that you can buy a person, have power of life and death over that person. And for women, who are particularly vulnerable, the power lies in having control over their bodies, to be able to force them to do something even if they don't want to. In the US here, taking advantage of a woman like that is taboo, a violation of her rights. So if you have enough money that you can buy that right from her, then owning a woman to whom you can do anything, at anytime, is the ultimate status symbol, the ultimate power trip. That's why they do this."

"I could never do that."

"And that's what separates you from them."


	14. Chapter 38: Assessment

**Chapter 38: Assessment**

Her next conscious memory was of hands unlocking the chains hanging from her wrists that kept her tethered to the floor. She was too weak, at this point, to try to fight them, too weak to try running; still dazed from the drugs, desperate for some clean, cold water but unable to force her numb tongue and bruised lips to shape the request, she just hung limply from the hands under her arms as she was dragged from the shipping container that had been her prison for God only knew how long. Her hair was filthy and matted and hung in tangles around her face; while the bruises had mostly faded from her skin (it had been a while since they'd beaten her) she was too weak and disoriented to fight anymore. She'd spent a lot of time just drifting in a drug haze. At least here there was no pain.

The voices around her now were saying something, and she managed to find enough awareness to try and pick out syllables. Not English, but longer syllable words. Dutch, she identified after one confused moment, trying to remember where she'd heard sounds like that before. She'd heard it at the ICC, at The Hague. She tried desperately to move her lips, to shape the word 'Help' in that language, but she simply couldn't; even that tiny movement was an enormous effort under the drugs, and then rendered impossible a moment later by the introduction of a rag in her mouth. A hand grabbed a handful of her hair, yanked it back until her mouth opened involuntarily, and stuffed the rough cloth into her mouth, effectively silencing whatever sounds she might have made.

"She's filthy."

"She'll clean up. I saw her when we picked her up. She was a beauty. Red hair and green eyes. Problem is she's also a hell of a fighter, got some kind of martial arts training so we had to keep her drugged and chained the whole trip."

"She has green eyes?" A hand roughly peeled her eyelid back, and a bright light was flashed into it, making her moan; a moment later someone stuck a finger in her eye, and she whimpered again, a formless protest at the pain. The hand let her eyelids close. "Real green eyes. Not contacts. She'll fetch a hefty price, wouldn't be surprised if she ran a quarter of a million." And then a hood was popped over her head, darkening her world again, and her wrists were chained together behind her back. "Load her into the truck, men, and be careful." As she was dragged off, she heard the Dutch voice behind her say, "We'll let the dealers figure out how to get her clean."

Then there was nothing but formless drifting for a time, as she lay on the floor of what felt like a panel truck that rattled and bounced toward an unknown destination. The drugs were wearing off, she noticed after a time as her overstretched, aching arms and legs made their pain known to her slowly through the drug haze. Right about the time that she was starting to feel the last of the haze slowly start to clear, the truck stopped.

She tried to gather herself to spring out of the truck, but her legs were shaking and she missed her chance. Hands grabbed her ankles roughly, yanking her backwards out of the truck, and she gave a tiny moan as she felt splinters from the rough wood plank floor dig into her skin, but she was helpless to do anything about it as two men each grabbed one arm and half-marched, half-carried her into what she guessed was a building. She tried to keep track of the tunings, of lefts and rights, but this was too much effort for her and even though a tiny part of her mind screamed at her with the need to identify where she was and how to get out of wherever this labyrinth was, there was still enough of the drugs left in her system to make her dull and drowsy and she could do nothing but let herself be escorted along until finally they stopped—and dropped her to a rough, cold concrete floor.

"Well. What do we have this time? I see a white woman."

"This one's a real moneymaker, boss. White, got fire red hair and real green eyes—I checked them myself. No contacts. Look at her skin, milky white and a few freckles, means she's a real-redhead, though I couldn't be completely sure because her hair's filthy. The African slavers that brought her in said she's some kind of fighter so they couldn't risk letting her free to wash her off, they figured we'd do it."

"Think she's a fight slave?"

"She can fight, though I don't think she's a slave. She's got a little tattoo on her hip, some kind of Japanese characters with braided lines around it." She was nudged roughly with the toe of a hard shoe, rolled over, and felt a hand on her hip, touching the tattoo there; Snake Eyes' name, surrounded by a Celtic knot. "Most likely someone who trained in martial arts."

"Take the hood off." The hood was yanked off her head a moment later, and the man sucked in a sharp breath as she blinked blurry eyes, tearing from the harsh, bright fluorescent light of this shipping dock.

"What's wrong?"

"She's a US Army officer, captured while on a humanitarian mission in the Congo a few weeks ago. Her picture was circulated all over half of Africa and Europe by INTERPOL; the Americans want their soldier back. I was in the shipping office yesterday turning in cargo manifests from Houthaven and I saw her picture posted on the bulletin board."

"We're in trouble."

"No we're not. How many people saw her face?"

"The African cargo ship captain saw her face, and so did his men. But as soon as I saw her I put a hood over her head because I didn't want anyone to see how pretty she is—I figured you'd want to keep the best merchandise under wraps until the auction."

"Good thinking. All right. Inform our African contacts that that cargo ship's captain should never see land again. And anyone else who has seen her face. We can't have anyone possibly telling the authorities that we have this woman here, do you understand? You two I trust, but no one else." Shana's mind, slowly clearing, picked up the slight trace of disdain in this other man's voice; he was lying, and the two men who had brought her here were both going to die very quickly and very soon, to keep them from possibly telling anyone of her presence here. Only one person can keep a secret, went the old saying, and this Dutch port official was going to make sure he himself was the only one who knew who Shana really was. "In the meantime, take her back to the recovery room and chain her up. Securely. She's worth too much money to risk having her try to escape. I'm going to send a message out to some of our richest clients about the excusive merchandise we got in and invite them here to bid on her; we could get a quarter of a million dollars for her from the right person." You could almost hear the greed dripping from his voice.

Hands grabbed her arms and she was roughly dragged from the well-lit bay down a dark, narrow corridor. By now she'd gained enough control over her limbs and body to tense her muscles, and the moment they dropped her on the floor of a dimly-lit concrete room she tried to get her feet under her to run, but someone grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked, and she cried out at the sudden pain. "Not going anywhere, missy. You're worth a lot of money to the right people and you're not going to get a chance." She was dragged by her hair to one wall of the room, knees scraping on the concrete floor, and one of the two men held a knife to her throat. "Now, we're going to unchain your hands and re-chain them to the wall. One false move and I'll cut your throat." And since she still wasn't sure about her control over her shaking limbs, she acquiesced to their demands and sat with her back to the wall, then let them stretch her arms out, chaining each wrist to an iron ring set in the wall, the rings about five feet apart.

And then they were gone, leaving her alone, tears slipping hopelessly from her eyes. Someone had seen her, recognized her, knew who she was, but wasn't going to report her because she was worth too much money.

It was a long time later before the man who had identified her came into the room, long enough that the false calm that sank in after her mind cleared from the drugs was over and her limbs were starting to shake from the drug withdrawal. Fire-sharp cravings for the drug was sizzling down her nerves, her body having developed a physiological dependence on it in the time she'd been on the cargo ship from Africa, and she stared up at him, hopeless rage in her eyes mixed with pain and need.

"They had to keep you drugged so you wouldn't fight them." He saw the trembling in her thighs and correctly guessed the cause. "I suspect they overdosed you; don't worry, I'm going to give you more of what you need in just a moment." He stepped over to the wall and uncoiled a long hose. "Let's get you cleaned off first, though."

The cold water made her scream in sudden shock, but the filth running off her body leaving clean skin behind felt good. The crusted grime had been itching abominably and been driving her crazy, but even worse than that was the tormenting thirst. She recognized the dry mouth as a side effect of one of the 'truth drugs' she'd been administered and tried to angle her head to catch as much of the water on the cloth in her mouth as possible, an attempt to suck water from the gag.

"Thirsty?" He smiled, reached out, and yanked the gag from her mouth. For just a moment she thought about biting his fingers off, but as cold water flowed into her mouth she drank greedily, spluttering as she tried to swallow too much at once and choked, but she was able to take the edge off her thirst by the time he turned the hose off.

He went to a closet at the other end of the room, then, and took out what looked like a 2" ring with two straps on it. Before she could realize what he intended to do with it, he'd crossed the room swiftly, grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back until her mouth opened involuntarily, then jammed the ring into her mouth, positioning it until it was wedged behind her teeth and held her mouth open. She cried weakly in anger but was helpless to fight him as he tied the two leather thongs behind her head, and when he finally stepped back her mouth was being held open by the ring gag. She started to scream at him, to curse, but he came back with something that looked like a rubber balloon on the end of a squeezable air bulb, valve, and hose like she'd seen on Doc's blood-pressure cuffs, and he popped that into the ring, into her mouth, and inflated it. Three squeezes effectively cut off her protests, leaving her unable to do anything but produce incoherent screaming; another squeeze compressed her tongue to the floor of her mouth, effectively taking away her ability to form syllables; one more squeeze and she groaned frantically as she felt her jaw muscles creak. He saw the alarm in her eyes, and smiled.

"A dislocated jaw is extremely painful, but also easy to pop back in place and leaves no marks. We do it a lot here. If you continue to fight me, I'll dislocate your jaw with just a couple squeezes." She was afraid of that, and she stopped fighting. "The Africans don't know how to punish a woman without leaving marks. Believe me, we have ways of punishing you with pain here that won't leave a single mark on your skin. Now, since you are a US Army officer, I'm sure you're intelligent enough to figure out that cooperation will be easier on you." He smiled, then reached down."I want to take a look at this tattoo of yours. Hmm. I read a little Japanese, so…snake eyes? So you're a gambler, hmm? A roll of the dice." He smiled. "Normally if a slave comes in with someone's name tattooed on them except their own, we burn it off their skin or cut that patch of skin off together." Her eyes widened in fear, and he laughed. "Don't worry; having seen it, we won't do that to you. It's not traceable like someone's name, and besides, your body is so magnificent that we're not going to risk bringing down your value by permanently scarring you. Whoever buys you will be making that decision."

He frowned now. "Your hair is filthy. I don't suppose you'd cooperate if I unchained your hands and asked you to wash your own hair? No? A pity." He shrugged. "I'll get a couple of slaves to come in later to wash it. In the meantime…" He squatted in front of her, reached down, slid his hands between her thighs, tried to pull them open.

She kicked out, catching his wrist sideways, making him fall backward with the sudden impact. He tumbled over but regained his feet quickly, and she stared at him in undisguised hatred as he slowly climbed to his feet, cradling his kicked wrist. "Damn bitch," he spat, the first time he'd lost his temper in front of her; a small victory.

Some of that triumph must have shown on her face, or in her eyes, or maybe he was just pissed. He reached forward, grabbed the bulb dangling from the rubber inflatable in her mouth, and gave it a fast squeeze. She screamed as the muscles in her jaw protested, tears filling her eyes, then screamed again, in fear, as she saw his hand muscles tense. As if in slow-motion, she saw his fist clench, then an incredible popping sound filled her head, her ears, as the bladder in her mouth expanded to the point where it popped her right lower jaw out of its socket.

And now a different sound filled her head and ears, the sound of her own screams, trapped inside her head and barely audible to anyone else except as a high-pitched howling from the back of her throat. Tears of agony streamed from her eyes. She'd never felt pain like this before, never felt anything like it; it was so sharp and sudden that her stomach heaved, upset by the volume of water she'd drank on an empty stomach and now this incredible, acute pain in her jaw. She tried to scream, retched instead, and for a few seconds could think of nothing else as her body fought for air to breathe even as her lungs screamed for that same air to express the level of agony she was feeling. Stomach acid mixed with the water she'd drunk came from her nose, having no other outlet than her sinuses, and she fought for air for a while, her body shaking in the chains that held her. By the time she was able to get her lungs and body under control, he'd left the room, presumably to tend to his wrist, leaving her alone with the acute agony from her partially-dislocated jaw.

It seemed like forever before he came back; by the time he did, this time with two other men and a woman, she was exhausted and all she wanted was for the pain to stop. She begged him with her eyes, pride and defiance gone in the face of this new, overwhelming agony, and he laughed as he released air from the valve. The hiss of air escaping as the gag in her mouth deflated corresponded to the release of pressure in her jaw, and she sobbed, grateful for even this much relief. Agony flared again as he untied the straps that held the ring behind her front teeth and took the ring from her mouth, and she screamed weakly a moment later as he touched her lower jaw, but then relief followed the pain as he snapped her lower right jaw back in place, a sharp click followed by the sudden absence of pain.

She was so stunned by how suddenly the agonizing pain had stopped that she was barely aware of the two men he'd brought with him unchaining her wrists; she was given no chance to escape, however, no chance to gather herself to try; she was dragged to her feet, ignoring how her legs were shaking now from withdrawal, and rechained standing, facing the wall.

The next thing she felt was the woman's hands on her hair, cold water on her scalp. She shivered, but the hands were working shampoo into her hair, fingers carefully combing out the worst of the tangles and mats. By the time she was done, everyone in the room could see the bright flame-colored mass of her long hair, unbound, unconfined, flowing to her waist.

"Truly a beauty. I think this is the best we're going to do to get her clean without her cooperation, but we'll see if a week with us will help change her attitude." The port official snapped his fingers at the woman. "Now. You, wash her everywhere."

The soap and water felt good on Shana's body, but she made an inarticulate sound of protest as she felt the woman's hands between her legs. "No," she whimpered, twisting in her bonds. "Please…don't…" but her protests were ignored.

"So. She is responsive," The port official smiled as the woman stepped back from Shana's body. "We can sell her for a lot of money. Let's start contacting the upper-class clients and let them know we have some very high-end merchandise."

One of the watching guards snickered. "Red hair. The word for redhead in my language, Italian, is _testa rossa_. It also happens to be the name of one of Ferrari's vintage exotic sports cars."

The port official smiled. "Good. Let's set up the brochures for next week's slave auction as a car auction and put her on it as a Testarossa."


	15. Chapter 39: The Market

**Chapter 39: The Market**

"This is it?" Conrad stared doubtfully at the run-down little warehouse sitting here at the end of Zonolite Rd, in Amsterdam's semi-industrial warehouse district. Alex had had a second interview with Yu, minus Cam this time, and his interest had shifted away from needling Cam and making her uncomfortable and more toward giving Alex enough information to be helpful. Although Alex had signed an agreement with his lawyer about giving him federal immunity, he must still be feeling that she had a trick up her sleeve.

Which she did, but wasn't going to enlighten him until it was time.

"According to the map, yes, this is it." Allie turned in her seat and looked at Cam, sitting quietly in the back. "Are you okay?"

Cam's voice sounded slightly strained. "Yes. I wasn't expecting the road to be this bumpy."

Conrad broke in. "Are you…wearing…" He broke off and swore. "Jesus. Cam, I'm sorry, I would have tried to take a smoother road if I'd known." Thinking about all the bumps they'd traveled over, and what Cam must have been feeling each time they went over one made him wince.

She smiled gently at him. "Conrad, it's okay. I'm going to have to be ready to put up with more discomfort than this fairly soon." She sighed. "Let's get ready to go in."

She had worn a simple button-front dress here, and no underclothing. Now, sitting in the back of the SUV with tinted windows, she slipped out of the long duster she wore, unbuttoned the dress, and slipped it off her shoulders. Underneath she wore nothing but her dog tags and a harness strapped around her hips that held some invasive pieces of equipment inside her body. The bumpy road down here to the warehouse had made her regret her choices, but there was no going back now, no matter how terrified she was.

She slipped the bead chain with her dog tags on it off over her head and handed it quietly to Allie, who teared up at the sight of them. "Please give them to Charlie."

"I will," Allie said quietly. "Cam…please know that we are grateful for this plan to get Shana back, but I do want you to know that you are coming back. We will never leave either one of you out here, and Clayton was serious about the one month rule. I…I couldn't bear it if we lost both of you."

"Three," Cam said quietly. "Snake Eyes died when we lost Shana, and if we don't find her he'll go looking for her on his own. You'll lose him too."

There was nothing either Allie or Conrad could say to that, so they didn't even try as Cam buttoned her coat, took a deep breath, and opened the door of the SUV.

The warehouse itself looked dark and deserted, the last one on the row of other mostly-deserted warehouses. The difference was that, if you looked closer, the graffiti was a little too carefully placed; the windows weren't broken, and they weren't dark because there was no light inside, they were dark because the insides of the windows had been painted a heavy, opaque black.

Conrad and Allie walked up to the front door, Cam following a step behind, eyes lowered, silent. Conrad was keeping one eye on the 'gang' of 'street rats' hanging out to one side of the door. Yu had told Alex to expect it, that these 'street toughs' were actually the guards to the place, so he wasn't surprised when one of them accosted the three Joes. "That's a couple of nice pieces of ass you have there."

Allie responded as a handler would, swiftly and aggressively, pinning him to the wall beside the door with a fist in his shirtfront. "Want to fix your tone?" she said, the angry edge in her voice only-half feigned. "I am not a piece of ass."

"Then this one is." A couple of the other toughs had fallen into either side of Cam, who kept her eyes fixed to the ground, silent and submissive.

"We're bringing her to market to sell for our employer, Alan Singletary." Conrad said easily to the guy who Allie was pinning to the wall. "Let him go, Allie."

She glowered, but let him go, establishing Conrad as the leader for their little group. The guy she was pinning didn't lose sight of that little detail; he addressed Conrad directly. "This one of his sex slaves?"

"This is one of those Asians he likes, yeah. Used up and tossed aside when she's so damaged he doesn't like her anymore.

"She don't look damaged." The guy addressed Cam directly. "Take off your coat."

Cam had warned Conrad and Allie that this might happen—he was going to challenge her obedience right at the door. Any free woman or untrained slave would hesitate to disrobe on a public street; even a hesitation or a reluctance to do so would be commented on and mark them as not being who they were supposed to be.

So she shrugged out of the duster.

There were exclamations of surprise as the guards saw her scarred skin. "God damn, I thought Singletary's last one looked bad with the brands all over her. This one's worse!"

The leader demanded sharply, "Slave. What happened to you?"

Cam said evenly, "Master Singletary was playing with fire. It got out of control and I got burned." There actually had been a fire on the Singletary estate, as Yu had told Alex; his landscapers had been burning autumn leaves and the fire got out of control and had burned a small shed on the property before they got the fire put out. Cam had used that as part of her cover story; if anyone asked about the scarring, she was in the shed when it burned.

"If that had been me I'd have put you down. Damaged meat ain't no good." The lead tough sneered.

"Master Singletary spent a lot of time and took special care to train me for particular services. That made him decide that I was worth saving, but once I healed and he got another slave who can do what I do and isn't as ugly as I am, he decided to send me here to be sold."

The tough grinned. "Good luck selling that here. You'll be lucky if you get five thousand for her." He swung the door open, and Conrad and Allie walked through, just in time to hide their shock. "Five thousand?" Allie choked as she leaned in close to clip the leash to Cam's collar.

"Shana's worth a quarter of a million to the right buyer." Cam said quietly. "Let's go."

And once inside they got an even bigger shock.

On the warehouse floor were dozens of what looked like pens for animals at a livestock fair; except that these pens held humans. People. Although it looked chaotic and bewildering at first, Conrad and Allie soon realized that the warehouse was actually divided into four sections and a sign in front of each section told you what sort of slave you could buy in each one. Closest to the door on the right side of the warehouse was a sign that said 'brown', and the pens inside held Latino and Hispanic men, women, and children, divided by age, gender and labor purpose; one pen said 'manual' and held mostly men; another said 'domestic' and had mostly older women; another pen said 'male—sex' and had young men in their late teens to early twenties; the pen next to this one said 'female—sex' and in front there were four pens of children, two with signs that said 'girls to 10' and 'girls 10-16' and two corresponding pens of boys. Allie had to fight a swift and nasty battle with her conscience as she saw an older white man dressed in jeans and a cowboy hat bend over one screaming girl who was in the 'girls to 10' pen and stick his hand between her legs.

"Jesus God," she whispered to Conrad as sick horror washed over her. "This is…this is… I've never…" She couldn't even tell him what she thought. Sick? Abominable? Horrific? Disgusting? They were all that but there was no being able to describe what she felt. Words just weren't adequate.

"I know," Conrad said, keeping his voice low. "Allie, oh God, the thought of Shana here, being pawed over and ogled and fondled against her will by strangers—I want to bring every one of the Joes here and free every slave, shoot every single last bastard in here looking to buy a person. I heard about human trafficking but this…" he took a deep shuddering breath. "This is monstrous."

They passed through similar sections for 'blacks', then walked more slowly through the section for 'whites'. In the pen marked "female—sex," they stopped for long moments, searching every face for a pair of green eyes and fiery hair, found none. "She's not here." Allie's voice caught in a near-sob. "She's not here. We were so certain she would be here."

"She could have come through and gone by now. Remember it's been three weeks and we don't know what route the cargo vessel she was on took." came Cam's quiet voice from behind them. "There's someone watching us, back there by the 'yellow' female sex slave pen. I don't know if he's watching you or me, likely me because he thinks you might be here to unload me but I can't be sure. So let's keep moving. You'll have to approach the dealer for 'female—sex' and see if he'll pay anything for me; if not, there's a pen all the way in the back for the 'damaged meat'—the people who are in too bad a physical shape to be used for anything else except violent sex or death films."

"No." Allie said firmly. "We are not going to leave you in that pen. If they don't buy you at the sex slave pen we're going to take you out of here and try to get you in another way."

Conrad approached the dealer at the Asian 'female—sex' pen. "What do you want?" The dealer said bluntly.

Conrad bristled. "We're here with one of Master Singletary's slaves. He's tired of her and wants us to sell her for him."

"An owner abandon, eh?" The dealer peered at Cam, standing a step behind Allie and Conrad. "What's it's name?"

Conrad and Allie stared at each other; they hadn't thought about that, before they could hesitate long enough for the pause to be noticeable, however, Cam herself stepped forward and sank gracefully to her knees. "This slave is called hole, Master," she said.

_Hole?_ Allie mouthed to Conrad, but Cam was still speaking.

"Master Singletary called this slave hole because that is all this slave is good for. A hole to be used in any way my Master sees fit." Allie wanted to choke; it was a vile way to describe a woman.

"Master Alan Singletary?" The dealer looked slightly more interested. "Singletary always brings in well-trained slaves. Might be scarred up some, like you, but still well-trained. What do you do?" He looked at Conrad and Allie. "Is it trained to do anything special?"

"Everything, Master."

"You seem awfully young to say 'everything'." The dealer sniffed disdainfully. "Come here and demonstrate your skills." He looked enquiringly at Conrad. "If that's okay with Master Singletary."

Conrad looked down at Cam, saw the almost imperceptible nod. "Not at all. Go ahead." He forced the words through stiff lips. Allie tried not to flinch, tried to force herself to look nonchalant and matter-of fact as the harness came free of Cam's lower body.

Her face twisted in an expression of agony as he started, but not a sound escaped her gritted teeth except for a panted hiss. She leaned forward over the rail of the pen, gripping it with her hands, bracing herself; her hips ground into the rail, and Allie winced at the splinters that dug into her skin, but thankfully the whole sickening, disgusting incident was over quickly. He pushed off her, and Cam's legs buckled, dumping her onto her knees beside the pen. Her head was down so they couldn't see her face, but her shoulders heaved; it took every last ounce of self-control Allie possessed not to take Cam in her arms and comfort her.

The dealer pulled his pants up as if nothing had happened, then started pulling his belt out of the loops on his pants as Cam climbed to her feet and grabbed the rail again; only Allie and Conrad noticed the tiny tremble in her knees.

Conrad had to grab Allie's wrist tightly to keep her from stepping forward; Cam's screams filled their ears as the heavy, supple strap of leather snapped over her bare skin. Five times, hard enough to bruise. When he finally lowered the strap, Cam collapsed to the floor, curled up in a tight ball, sobbing, and Allie wanted to scream, to shoot the son of a bitch, anything.

She had no idea how she managed to keep herself from not going to Cam; how she managed to not run to her friend, hug her, take her out of there. Conrad said something to the dealer, who said something back, and money changed hands; then Conrad took her arm and somehow she forced herself to turn, to walk away from Cam, her friend and fellow Joe, crying on the floor behind her, and leave the warehouse. It was the hardest thing she had ever done, and she would never know, afterward, how she did it; all she knew was that she was finally, suddenly, in the front seat of the SUV and Conrad was driving. They made it back to their hotel; it was only as they were parking that Allie finally broke down and cried, sat in the front seat and sobbed and cried, feeling guilt and regret and shame settle on her shoulders. Conrad leaned across the front seat, and she buried her face in his shoulder, crying. "We have to go back," she sobbed. "We have to go back. We can't leave her there. Jesus, Conrad, she went through three years of stuff like that…how did she survive it? How could Shana survive having that done to her?"

Conrad held her as she cried, stroked her hair, and tried hard not to break down himself. Rage had risen in him as he saw Cam fighting to comply, to submit. "If we go back we might get her back, Allie, but she'll hate us for doing it. She wants to find Shana, and we've gone too far. To pull her out now will invalidate the sacrifice she made to go in there." Because it was a sacrifice, a sacrifice that Conrad had no idea how she'd been able to make. He'd never forget, for the rest of his life, the image of Cam lying there crying—and superimposed over that was the image of Shana in the same position, screaming, crying, writhing. And he prayed fervently that this plan was going to work.

Too many of the Joes had already made too many sacrifices for it not to work.


	16. Chapter 40: Found

**Chapter 40: Found**

"Rise and shine!"

The concrete room was suddenly flooded with light and Shana blinked as she slowly straightened. The chains weren't relaxed enough for her to lie down and sleep, she had to sleep sitting up against the wall, but they did give her enough slack to allow her to bring her arms up and almost all the way down, and it wasn't as stressful on the muscles of her arms as lying on the floor of the shipping container had been.

Over the last couple of days she'd been joined in this bare concrete room by four other slaves. Although none of them spoke English, she'd heard just enough from the slavers speaking to them to gather that one spoke Spanish and two spoke some French. They were all women; the one who spoke Spanish reminded Shana of the movie actress Jessica Alba, with golden-brown skin typical of Latinos and long, heavy black hair that hung down her back. The other two, the ones who spoke French, were African; she recognized some of their words as ones she'd heard back in the Congo.

At least once a day they were unchained and led out for a brief time; Shana decided it was probably about an hour. Then they were brought back, unmarked or harmed in any way. She assumed that was so that the women could maintain their physical condition; all four of them were, from what she overheard the guards saying, considered 'exceptional' and so wouldn't be offered up in the regular market, but kept for a private, invitation-only auction reserved for only the wealthiest buyers.

Of the five, only Shana was the one kept chained, not allowed to be free for a moment, and she couldn't even communicate with the other slaves because of the gag. They were using it as a method of control; having once experienced partial jaw dislocation, she had no intention of ever experiencing it again. The inflatable gag had a tube running through the middle of it, and they pumped some sort of thin gruel through that tube twice a day.

She was still getting the needles of drugs, and she was still spending large chunks of each day in a drugged haze, but they hadn't beaten or raped any of the five women in that room. From listening to the guards talk she learned that they were giving the women 'a break' so that when the buyers finally came they'd be in the best possible physical condition and be physically attractive and appealing. So the 'break' wasn't being given out of compassion but out of consideration for profit.

Shana didn't care. It was still a break from the endless cycle of pain and drugs she'd suffered on the African leg of this trip. The doses of drugs she had been getting were, she quickly deduced, 'maintenance doses'—doses carefully measured to ensure that she remained physically dependent on them, but didn't let her start withdrawing from them.

Light now flooded the room, and a man she'd never seen before stepped in. "We have to get you ready for the auction," he announced in badly accented English. "Each one of you will be given soap and shampoo and will need to clean yourself in order to look presentable. Scrub every inch and wash your hair thoroughly." He went over to where there was a showerhead sticking out of the wall by the door, and turned a knob just under it.

Water poured from the showerhead, and Shana saw the little curls of steam rising from the stream of water shortly thereafter. A hot shower! Shana suddenly wanted that hot shower more than she wanted anything else at just that moment, wanted it desperately.

One by one, the other four women went and took their showers, walking meekly over to the showerhead as a guard unchained them. Most of them simply had a shackle around one ankle, padlocked to a ring in the wall; none of them was chained as Shana was, both wrists held wide apart, and none of the others were gagged and fed through a tube. She saw the way they reacted, the obvious pleasure they got as they showered under the hot water, but she simply couldn't see herself submitting meekly to the guards, couldn't imagine not fighting the moment her arms were free.

"Now. You." The man stood in front of her, and she glared at him in undisguised hatred. "You need to go over there and shower. You we need clean more than the other sluts because you are going to cost the most. Will you cooperate?"

Her glare must have been answer enough.

He stood looking at her thoughtfully for a moment, then snapped his fingers at one of the other men. "Go find me one of the cheap girls. Damaged meat. An obedient one." The man turned and left, and Shana's blood ran cold. What would this man do to another girl? Was he going to threaten her to ensure Shana's cooperation?

"Boss needs a girl. Damaged meat, obedient." The guard said to the man outside Cam's pen.

Cam perked up at that, although she was careful to try and hide her interest. Over the last two days as she sat in the pen for damaged slaves, she'd had numerous people ask the dealer for damaged meat, but no one had, thus far, picked her; although there had been plenty who asked for a test-drive. For many, while they might have said 'damaged', they were unprepared for just how scarred she was, and for many it was a turn-off. Several of them tried her out but no one bought her. Sensitive by now to the people who were just looking for a girl to use in a snuff film, Cam's efforts would be awkward or unsatisfactory, and although the last man to do this to her punched her several times, swelling one eye and splitting her lip, the dealer had put a stop to it and quickly forced the man to leave; no one wanted damaged meat to be damaged further.

"I got just the girl for you." The dealer pointed a finger at her. "You there! Hole!"

She did as she'd been trained, so long ago, to do; she crawled to him, knelt in front of him. "Yes, Master?"

He ignored her, turning instead to the guard. "Is this one damaged but obedient enough for you? What do you need her for anyway?"

"She'll work. We got ourselves a fighter back there, real-high-priced merchandise. I think boss thinks if he gets another girl and threatens the meat in front of her she might at least agree to do what she's told."

"She's all yours." The dealer waved the guard off, and the guard picked up the leash hanging from Cam's collar. Cam held still as he popped a hood over her head, made no attempt to remove it as she stumbled after his long strides, feeling her way tentatively because she couldn't see.

She was led along a twisting maze of lefts and rights, unable to track just how far into the building she was, until finally the guard tugged on her leash to stop her. She heard the sound of a rusted bolt being shot back on a heavy door, and moments later she was tugged forward to a stop.

Shana's eyes saw the guard open the door; the heavy boots were unmistakable, and then he turned and tugged on the leash of what was presumably another slave inside. Shana's eyes widened as she saw the slave stumble into the light of the room—there was stark white burn scar tissue on this slave's body from knees to chest, the right breast was burned and covered with scar tissue, and oh, dear God, surely there could not be two people in the whole world with the same scars! She screamed Cam's name behind her gag, tongue working at the inflated portion frantically.

Cam jerked as she heard the frantic, muffled cry. It could have been her name, but…ignoring the man holding her leash, she tore at the hood covering her head, ripped it off, and as she blinked in the light, squinted, and saw who was yanking futilely at the chains holding her to the wall, she screamed.

"_**SHANA!**_"

A fast jerk ripped the end of her leash out of the guard's hands and she ran to her friend, wrapping both arms around the redhead as tears flowed, hot and fast. Shana was crying too, dropping her head to Cam's shoulder, her chained wrists trying to wrap around Cam and failing miserably.

The guard grabbed the end of the leash and yanked backward, choking Cam as he pulled her backward, off balance, to the floor; Shana cried out behind her gag as Cam was dragged backward, away from her.

"You know each other." Shana nodded frantically; she didn't know if she'd be able to maintain her sanity if they took Cam away. How had she gotten here? Had she been kidnapped, like Shana was, from the jungle? Was she a captive, too? She had one black eye, a swollen, split lip; she also had bruises that were all too familiar, now, to Shana; Cam had been beaten just as Shana had. _She went through hell like this before, for three years. This has to be killing her! Don't take her away, please, I promise, I'll do whatever you want, just please, don't hurt her…_

And to her absolute shock, Cam was crying, pleading, as she crawled to her knees. "Please… please…don't hurt her, please, I'll do anything, just please don't hurt her…"

The guard looked at Cam, looked at Shana, then lashed out with a foot, kicking Cam brutally hard on one cheek. She fell over backward with a cry of shock, and he stepped firmly down on her hair, pinning her head to the floor as he whipped out a knife and laid it against Cam's throat. "You're going to go over there. Shower. Wash. Clean yourself up and make yourself presentable. If you don't, I'll cut her throat." Shana nodded her head frantically, her eyes fixed on the knife blade held too close to the artery in Cam's neck. "You're also not going to remove that gag." This was harder; her jaw ached from the constant pressure, and it didn't help that it still hurt from the partial dislocation from...how much earlier?...but Cam's life was more important, so she nodded, albeit a little more reluctantly.

The guard who had brought Cam in approached Shana warily, unlocking one wrist, freeing it from the shackles that had confined it for so long. Underneath it the skin on her wrists was raw, oozing slightly, but the pain faded into insignificance as she again focused on Cam, lying helpless on the floor, her eyes glued to the knife blade at her throat.

She took the bar of soap the guard handed her and the bottle of shampoo, then stepped under the stream of hot water. It stung the raw wounds on her wrists, but oh, the heat was so, so good… and the soap, as harsh as it was, was certainly cleaning filth and grime and soil, sweat and bodily fluids, from her skin. She took the time to clean her skin thoroughly.

And her hair…oh, her hair. The woman who had washed her had done the best she could, but now Shana raked her fingers through the tangles, letting the dirt and oil and filth that had collected next to her scalp during her captivity on the cargo ship wash down the drain, until she finally stepped out from under the stream of hot water, clean for the first time in God only knew how long. She could feel her legs trembling, but clenched her fists, desperately willing herself to stay lucid for just a little longer, to not give into the drug craving that threatened the edges of her consciousness.

They threw her a towel, and she dried herself off, the gag still in her mouth, her eyes fixed on Cam, lying helpless on the floor with the knife held to her throat. "Good. That's enough. Give the towel back." She handed it back to the guard. "Get back to your place on the wall." This was harder to do, but the arm holding the knife stiffened, clearly threatening, and she quickly stepped back in place against the wall, extending her arms so the guard could close the shackles around her raw wrists again.

Only when she was firmly shackled again did the man with the knife move, and this time he stepped to Shana, laid the knife blade across her throat. "You. On the floor. Get up and get washed. Since threatening you works to keep her in line, we'll use that. She steps out of line, you'll pay the price. Not like you're worth much anyway, ugly skinny little scarred thing like you. No wonder Master Singletary dumped you off here."

_Master Singletary_? Shana's eyes asked the question, but Cam didn't see her eyes; she grabbed the soap and shampoo and went to stand under the hot water, taking her turn in the hot shower. She closed her eyes as she was washing, and Shana realized that she had longed for that hot water just as Shana herself had; she hadn't bathed in a while either, then. Jesus, had they kidnapped her from the jungle? And what was this about a 'Master Singletary?'

Cam was finally clean, and as she towed herself dry the man appeared to make a decision. "I don't know how you know each other. It troubles me. But at the same time, I don't really care; the scarred one—hole, is what you're called?" Cam nodded. "Hole is obedient enough, and Testarossa seems to be willing to do what we want so long as we don't hurt her friend. We'll use that against each other." He nodded, then reached into a pocket and came up with a syringe. "Time for your nightly dose, then; I can see you shaking from the drug withdrawal. So we'll go ahead and give you enough to let you get some sleep tonight, just so you'll be at your best tomorrow when the buyers come to look at you."

Shana was shaking badly now, and she knew Cam could see it; she saw the anguish on her friend's face as she stared at the needle heading for her arm. The craving was a sharp, physical pain, and she wanted to scream, beg, whatever she had to do to get that needle in her arm faster; the tip slipped under the thin skin of the inside of her elbow, the tiny flash of pain nothing against the rush of overwhelming relief as the drugs she'd developed a physical dependence on flowed into her veins. She leaned her head against the wall behind her, eyelids fluttering closed as the drugs rushed into her head. And in that moment of lassitude, that moment of lucid drifting with no conscious thoughts, a question swam up from her subconscious. She'd taught Cam self-defense. Cam knew those moves as well as Shana herself did. Why hadn't she used them when the guy had held a knife to her throat? Then the drugs took over completely and Shana lost that train of thought as she slipped into darkness.

Cam's heart ached as she saw the naked craving in Shana's eyes. She'd known, as soon as she saw the redhead, that there was something wrong; her body language was a confused mix of half-awake, half-asleep; partly wide-awake and part drugged somnolence. When Shana had clenched her fists to stop her hands from shaking, Cam had been sure of it, and it was that which had kept her from yanking the knife out of the guy's hand, slashing his throat, and grabbing Shana to make a run for it. Shana wasn't going to be able to coordinate her movement well enough with the withdrawal kicking in, and trying to force an escape now would lead to Shana getting dragged back and Cam being killed.

_They have to have kept Shana drugged heavily the last few weeks. We saw all those needles and vials in that operating room back in the Congo; they must have drugged her then to keep her compliant and easy to handle, but they gave her too much too long and she's physically dependent on them now. I'll wait; I'll have to observe and see how much they're giving her and how long she has between bouts of withdrawal before I can plan anything. If we escape while she's too heavily dependent on them she could die—or at the very least it's going to require an extended withdrawal period and I can't handle that myself; if we can't find help the minute we break out of here she could die. It's better to stay where we are for the moment until I can get a handle on what she's going through and how bad it is._

As Shana slipped into drugged sleep Cam allowed the guard to grab her leash and drag her out of the room. This time she told herself she would track the turns between where they were holding her and where Shana was, but it turned out not to be necessary; they made a right when they left the room they held Shana in, took her about ten feet down that hall and stopped in front of the next door; when they open it she saw another concrete room, exactly like the one she'd just seen Shana in.

They forced her to sit and chained her to the wall, exactly the way they'd chained Shana; arms apart to rings in the wall. Despite her fear that they would hurt her, they apparently didn't want to get her dirty again; after a last tug to make sure she was firmly chained and couldn't go anywhere, they left, turning the light off and closing the door.

Cam was left alone in utter darkness. Fortunately, having spent her teen years locked in a basement where sometimes the light bulbs had gone out and it would be a day or two before those were replaced, she was used to darkness; it didn't bother or frighten her. She'd swept the room with her eyes when she walked in, saw no one else and nothing else in here, and knew she was alone. So she leaned against the wall, tried to make herself as comfortable as possible, and closed her eyes. As she slipped into sleep, her last thought was _I found her, I found her and she's alive…_


	17. Chapter 41: Base

**Chapter 41: Base**

_I found her…_

Charlie almost stopped breathing. The mental whisper had been so faint that he could have sworn it was just wishful thinking if he hadn't been dreamwalking, sitting on the floor of the quarters he shared with Cam, thinking about her as he let his mind hover in the semi-conscious state between awake and asleep. It was one of the things he was adept at doing, as a Navajo shaman and medicine man and that Cam herself had a little skill in as an Iroquois medicine woman-in-training.

He closed his eyes, tried to refocus after his heart gave that first, wild leap at hearing her voice. She was such an integral part of him, of his life and who he was, that now he couldn't imagine a life without her. He didn't know what he'd do without her. The arrangements she'd made with her tribe had ripped his heart out; she'd been preparing for the eventuality that she wouldn't be coming back; she knew perfectly well that there was a chance—there was always a chance—that she wouldn't. They all knew that.

After a moment he opened his eyes and sighed. If that had been Cam—and he was almost certain that it was—then he would take it on faith that she was now with Shana, that she'd found Shana. Since Allie and Conrad had only gotten back that morning—and looked like they hadn't slept a wink in the time they'd been gone—it was a good bet she'd found Shana at the Amsterdam market.

He uncurled his limbs smoothly from where he'd been sitting cross-legged on the floor and stood, stretching and working the kinks out of his back one by one as he thought. He'd heard Allie and Conrad talking about Snake Eyes and how he'd inexplicably woken up from a dream about Shana with bleeding wrists; he'd wondered at the time if Snake Eyes wasn't subconsciously dreamwalking himself and not knowing it; now would be as good a time as any to go and face the man with this bit of knowledge.

He knew where Snake Eyes was—everyone on base knew where he'd been spending his days. Shana's quarters. Not hiding from all of them, despite what some of the recruits were saying about having their hand-to-hand instructor suddenly absent from the class—Flint had taken over that particular class, though he wasn't as good an instructor as Snake Eyes and Shana were. No, contrary to what the recruits thought, he wasn't hiding; he was trying to stay as close as possible to the things that mattered most to her, to the one place Shana was most familiar with, trying to wrap himself in the remnants of her life.

Well, maybe he could give Snake Eyes some hope.

He dug around in a drawer for some bundles of herbs, a lighter, some incense, then changed into traditional Navajo shamanic clothing and left the room. He carried everything to Shana's room door, ignoring the startled glances the recruits shot his way; the regular Joes, accustomed to see in him striding around base in half-native half Army garb, simply nodded and gave him some respectful room. Even Frank Talltree, Charlie's Navajo brother, gave Charlie one appraising look then shrugged and let him pass. He continued walking until he got to Shana's room door, then knocked three times. When there was no answer from inside, he knocked once, again, then stepped in.

Snake Eyes looked up from where he was sitting on the floor of the room, and Charlie winced. He looked like he wasn't sleeping or eating well; his eyes had a lost, haunted look to them, his hair looked like it hadn't been combed in days, and he hadn't showered or shaved in a very long time either. Life, for him, seemed to have just suddenly stopped; the fact that his hair grew and he had the beginning of a beard growing because he hadn't shaved was the only indicator that time had passed at all for him.

Charlie squatted on his haunches in front of Snake Eyes as the other man dropped his head and his eyes again. "Snake Eyes."

Snake Eyes looked up slowly, and it was like looking into the eyes of a man with no soul. There was nothing behind his eyes except a lost, anguished emptiness, and Charlie sighed. "I heard Allie and Conrad talking the other day about you waking up from some very vivid dreams of Shana with matching wounds. Is this true?" not that he needed a response to that question; though Snake Eyes was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt, Charlie could see a peek of white bandaging around the other man's wrists.

Slowly, Snake Eyes brought his hands up and signed. _Doc didn't say it but he thinks I'm crazy. Said I should talk to Psyche-Out._

It was the first form of communication that they'd had from Snake Eyes in a long time; over the past week he'd seemed more ghost than person. A small victory, but one that Charlie would take, nonetheless. There was still a living person in there somewhere.

"I know you're not crazy." Snake Eyes raised his head, and there was a faint spark of hope down inside his eyes. "What you're describing is something we shamans call dreamwalking, where the mind casts itself out on the pathways of dreams and can experience another's dreams as if it was their own. Only I don't think you're experiencing Shana's dreams, I think her conscious mind is being subdued, somehow, probably with the drugs that we saw in the medical lab back in the Congo and because of the close connection the two of you have, you're able to slip into her mind in some way and know what she's experiencing. It usually happens during sleep, but since you're experienced with meditation and far-east martial arts practices, some of which aren't all that different from Native American shamanic practices, I thought maybe I could show you how to achieve the same connection while awake and conscious, thereby able to control it."

Snake Eyes' eyes widened. _I'm not crazy? There is such a thing? Doc told me it was just wishful thinking._

"There is such a thing. The white man's medicine doesn't cover everything, and Doc doesn't know everything. Are you willing to give it a try?"

Snake Eyes thought about that for a moment. _Yes,_ he finally signed, and Charlie hoped that they'd be successful; there was hope in Snake Eyes expression and body language for the first time in weeks.

"You and Shana spent a lot of time in the dojo, correct? We need a place where both of you have strong emotional ties, both to each other and to the place, and where you've spent a lot of physical time. I'd do it here since you two were here most of the time—I've heard Court and Allie whispering about the sounds coming from this room." Snake Eyes blushed—blushed!—but signed, _we spent a lot of time in the dojo. We'd…go there for some privacy when Allie or Courtney was…entertaining._

That was a little more than Charlie actually needed to know, but at least he knew that Shana and Snake Eyes both had the requisite ties to the physical location of the dojo. "Come with me. I'm going to show you how to slip into the trance that will let you consciously control your dreamwalking."

Snake Eyes got up and followed Charlie out of the room. They passed Allie, just coming out of her room; she did a double take, staring at Charlie and the back of Snake Eyes' head, but Charlie gave his head a tiny, negative shake; Allie just stood and watched them vanish around the corner toward the rec and gym levels.

They sat in the middle of the dojo, cross legged; Charlie placed the incense burner on the floor and lit the end of an incense stick, then quickly blew out the flame at the end and let the scented end glow. The smell of a pine woods filled the dojo, a scent both sharp and refreshing at the same time, and Snake Eyes looked at Charlie in surprise and pleasure. "You have a cabin in the California mountains, I know that, so the pinewood smell will remind you of open air and the mountains. It'll help you relax. Cam's tribe lives in the middle of the pine woods in western New York on the Canadian border; so the scent of pine brings her a lot of good memories with it too. Now, close your eyes. Breathe in deeply and try to clear your mind. Let yourself drift. I know you and Shana meditate in here so I know you can do this. Close your eyes, let your mind drift, and try not to think of anything. Let your mind go completely blank."

Charlie tried to keep his voice low, soothing; as he finished speaking he began to chant, and old Navajo prayer that was more a focus of intent that it was a plea for spiritual guidance. He didn't want guidance on this, their intent was to find a way to reach their soulmates, wherever they were, somewhere on the other side of the world.

He swayed slightly with the chant; something he did unconsciously. There was no one true way to do this, and every shaman had their own unique ways of reaching the dream paths.

He could feel himself slipping onto the paths, and despite his resolution to keep an eye on Snake Eyes, he simply couldn't help himself anymore and he slipped into the trance. Once here, on the dreampaths, he could see the shining silver thread that stretched from him to Cam, the thread that bound their souls together; the thread through which he could feel her emotions and get some vague sense of her physical condition.

She was asleep, but only lightly; her conscious mind was still too active for him to slip past the interference and settle into her subconscious. It was harder when someone was awake because their conscious mind sent up a wave of white noise that interfered with the subconscious; the dreampaths could be more easily reached through the subconscious and it took a lifetime of dedication and training to be able to access them consciously.

That wasn't what he was aiming for; he needed to know if she was alive, and if she'd found Shana. He sensed another presence beside him, and he 'saw' with his mind's eye Snake eyes joining him on the dreampaths. So the ninja master could make it, then—and although he couldn't see their bond himself, the way Snake eyes seemed to be following a path indicated that he and Shana had the same threads between then as Charlie and Cam did.

They both traveled on parallel paths, Charlie becoming more and more convinced that he and Snake Eyes really were heading for the same 'place' on the dream plane. And then it was confirmed as he heard the first murmur of Cam's mind ahead, as he saw the expression on Snake Eyes's face as he 'felt' Shana in front of him too.

And then a huge vibration shuddered down the thread, and Charlie felt off-balance for a moment. Cam was being woken, shaken awake roughly, and if something happened to him while he was here on the dreampaths, he would never come back to his body. So he grabbed Snake Eyes and towed him backwards, swiftly, until with a shocking suddenness, they both opened their eyes and found themselves back in the dojo, sitting there blinking in the light. The incense stick had burned to a thin line of ash on its holder, and Charlie felt every muscle and sinew complaining and stiff.

Snake Eyes was blinking dazedly; it was some time before he could finally bring his hands up to sign. _Is that what it's supposed to be like?_

"Yeah, that's it. You got the hang of it."

_It was incredible. I could see this shining thread coming out of me and heading away, and I just felt that if I followed it I would find her. And we got close, and I felt her, I could hear her thoughts. I could almost see her, a glowing light at the end of a dark tunnel, but there was something…I don't know, off, like it was here but there was a cloud or mist covering her, preventing me from really getting to her._

"I think that's the drugs. They are probably keeping her very heavily drugged to make sure she stays compliant and easy to handle. As soon as they realize that threatening Cam will get Shana to follow their demands, they're going to ease off on the drugs and it might be possible for you to finally reach her. For now, though, I'm tired and I'm hungry. Will you come with me to the mess and eat?"

For just a moment Charlie thought Snake Eyes might say yes, then the ninja shook his head. And Charlie sighed and folded his arms. "Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I'm not going to give you an option. When Cam's tracer stops moving and we go out to get the girls, they are both going to need us to be in good enough physical condition to help them get through whatever has been done to them. So you _are _coming with me to the mess hall to eat. It's Friday, I know what they serve on Fridays, and I've seen you eat with Shana on enough Fridays that I can tell the servers what you like and what you don't so you don't have to even put the tray down. So get up and come on."

Snake Eyes got up meekly and went.

Hawk stared at Allie and Duke as they put the duffel bag in the desk in front of him, opened it, took out a smaller briefcase, and opened that too. Inside were wads of Euros. "What the…what's this?"

"The money that 'Master Singletary' got for selling Cam." Allie bit the words out with a viciousness that surprised Hawk; she rarely ever got this angry. "Ten thousand dollars."

"T—ten…thousand…dollars?" Hawk couldn't wrap his head around that amount of money, Okay, yes he could, but not in conjunction with the idea of how much it would cost to buy a person. It seemed like a lot of money, but when you thought about what an actual person—thoughts, feelings, experiences, all the interpersonal connections that that one person had with so many other people—ten thousand didn't even begin to equate to what he thought a human being should be worth. "I…I…what do we do with it?" It didn't feel…right…somehow, for him to add it to the Joes' funds.

"Burn it!" Allie snapped, and as he looked at her, surprised again at the hard, angry edge in her voice, he realized that the anger was masking Allie's shock and hurt feelings. She was too pale, her eyes too wide, and he realized that as hard as it was on them watching Cam, Conrad and Allie leave, it had to have taken every ounce of effort and will both Conrad and Allie had to turn away and leave Cam there—knowing about her past and what she was likely going to experience while she was out there looking for Shana—had to have been one of the hardest things his two battle-hardened, seasoned soldiers had ever done.

"Don't…don't burn it." Conrad swallowed hard, trying to be stoic, trying to be a good soldier, but Hawk wondered what was going on in his head, wondered if Conrad was going to have nightmares that night. "It's blood money, yes, but…it's Cam's money, it was her sale. Add it to her pay for doing this, for being willing to go in there and do this, and Jesus, Hawk, you have no idea what its like there. My God, I never knew stuff like this still happened, if it wasn't for the clothes I would have thought we were still back in Colonial America in the slave days. There is no difference between colonial slavery and modern day slavery, absolutely nothing different between buying and selling people then and buying and selling people now. It's an abomination. We are supposed to be civilized, we're supposed to have progressed beyond all of this!"

Hawk felt a little more guilt settle on his shoulders at the haunted looks in Conrad and Allie's eyes. "We are supposed to but we aren't. If it makes you feel any better, once we have Cam and Shana back I am going to apply pressure to a lot of different agencies and the international community to shut the place down."

"Do that," Allie snapped, and then spun on her heel and stalked out of Hawk's office.

As she approached the door to her own room she saw Courtney coming out of Shana's. When she'd seen Snake Eyes leaving with Charlie earlier, she'd quietly told Courtney to slip in, take care of the laundry and change the sheets and pillows on the bed, which Courtney had apparently done, by the thumbs up the blond gave her as she disappeared down the hall toward the laundry with an armful of bedding. Allie swallowed the lump in her throat, then pushed open the door to her room, walked in without even turning the light on, and closed it behind her. Only then did she lean her back against the door and give in to the sobs that wracked her body.

Gentle hands reached for her shoulders, picked her up as if she were a child, and crushed her to a broad chest. She didn't even have to ask who it was; she knew whose fatigues felt rough under her cheek, knew who was hugging her so tightly, and she let go of all the pain and anguish and guilt and loathing she'd been carrying around for the last few days as they traveled back to New York from Amsterdam. "Oh, God, Dash," she sobbed, and then couldn't find words. There was nothing she could say, nothing he could do except hold her and hug her and try to comfort her as best he could.

"How do people do this, Dash?" she finally whispered, her eyes burning and red from crying, her voice harsh from the lump in her throat. "How do you buy and sell a person like…like clothes in a store, like picking out apples in a grocery store? What kind of sick freak would buy and sell a person and force that person to do something against her will?"

There was nothing Dash could say to that, so he didn't even try; he just held her as she cried, finally lying down with her on her bed as her anguished crying gave way to exhausted sleep, then he twitched the covers over both of them and cradled her in his arms. Hang the rules. He wasn't leaving Allie tonight.


	18. Chapter 42: Auction

**Chapter 42: Auction**

The light switched on in the room and Cam barely had a couple minutes to blink before she was shaken roughly, presumably to wake her. She'd been trying to reach Charlie on the dreampaths, to let him know that she had Shana, but her need to stay partially awake and vigilant had interfered with her ability to do that, and she had slipped into deep sleep without realizing it. She cursed herself for her inattention as she waited, docile, for them to unlock the chains on her wrists and free her arms.

_Soft. I'm getting soft. I've forgotten all those lessons I learned when I was fifteen. Stay vigilant. Do whatever they tell you. Be perfect, or they win. And if I lose, this time, it's not going to be just me who loses, Shana will lose too. And that is unacceptable. I made a promise to Snake Eyes—I will get her out. Whatever it costs me, I will get her out._

She followed the guard meekly into the hallway, where they were met by another guard with a wheeled cart carrying plastic bowls of rice swimming in thin broth. Her stomach rumbled hungrily, but she kept her eyes lowered, didn't react. _Control,_ her mind told her. _Control. Be the perfect slave._

"You." The guard pushed her forward until she was standing next to the cart. "You'll take this in to them." She obediently pushed the cart forward, through the door, into the next room.

The guards unlocked the chains for the other four women and Cam quietly handed them their bowls. The guard, however, shook his head when she stopped in front of Shana. "Not that one. Don't leave that one's hands free. Take the gag out and feed her."

Cam wanted to shout at him. From the looks of it, Shana was just on the edge of a drug haze; past the initial sleepiness, she was just now coming out of the drugged sleep, eyes blinking, her mind still fuzzy. As Cam released the air from Shana's inflatable gag and pulled it out, then untied the thongs that held the metal ring behind her teeth, she realized that they had carefully timed the doses given so that Shana would not be drugged-sleepy when they got her to the auction block but would still be uncoordinated and therefore easy to control.

"Shana. Shana, food." She gently patted Shana's left cheek. Shana moaned, her eyelids fluttering; her glazed eyes studied Cam for a moment without recognition, then her mouth opened.

Cam patiently fed Shana the watery soup in small bites; careful not to spill anything and careful not to give her friend so much at one time that she would choke. Other than the drugs, Shana didn't appear to be harmed, and she didn't seem to be in much pain at the moment, but Cam couldn't be certain that she didn't have non-fatal injuries under the skin; with the drugs running rampant through her system, it was entirely likely that Shana wasn't feeling any pain at all. She thought, briefly, about using sign language to try to communicate, but with Shana drugged to the gills she might not recognize it—and even if she did, she might not have the mental faculty to know to stay silent. They hadn't asked, not yet, but eventually someone was going to ask how they knew each other and Cam knew, with bone-deep certainty, that if they knew she and Shana were both active-duty US Army officers, neither one of them was going to see another minute. Death would be instantaneous.

She finished giving Shana the last of the food in the bowl silently as she pondered various alternatives. Finally she settled on a cover story; they had been childhood friends, when she was growing up in New York. She knew Shana had grown up in Georgia, but was certain she knew enough about the New York area from being posted at Joe Base that she could pass for a resident of the city. She'd have to keep an eye out for an opportunity to tell Shana the cover story, urge her to stick with it. If you were going to have to lie, keep it simple enough that you could still remember details even if you were being tortured, and the best way to keep it simple was to make it partially true so that you didn't have to make up too many details.

The guards were watching both of them carefully, so Cam had no way to tell Shana of her intentions by the time she finished giving the redhead the last spoonful of broth. As she put the plastic bowl back on the cart, the guard shoved the ring gag back in Shana's mouth and tied it behind her teeth, then pushed the inflatable into the ring and inflated it again. Shana gave an inarticulate sound of protest but by the time Cam turned around, she was slipping back in the drugged haze again.

The guards unchained one of the women, yanking her up roughly, then one held her chain as the other grabbed Cam's wrist and chained her roughly to the wall beside Shana. Then they left, tugging the other woman with them, and Cam was, finally, alone with Shana.

They had only confined one wrist; they hadn't chained the other, and she took advantage of it now to stretch her arm out as far as she could go and touch Shana's arm. "Shana," she said quietly. When Shana didn't respond, she said, louder, "Shana!"

Shana's eyelids fluttered open, and she looked blearily at Cam. Cam quietly tapped her fingers against Shana's arm in sign language. :Don't talk aloud. I don't want them hearing us:

Shana's fingers moved, sluggishly, slowly, but the sign language was unmistakable. :Drugged…can't focus…:

:I know. Look, we probably don't have much time until they come back. If anyone asks you how we know each other, we both grew up in New York:

A long moment while Shana's brow furrowed, her drug-fogged mind trying to absorb what Cam was saying. :Grew…up…New…York. Okay:

Cam hesitated over her next words. She wanted so badly to tell Shana that they would be rescued, that she was wearing a tracer and the Joes knew where she was and as long as she could stay with Shana, it would all be okay, but she didn't know if Shana would understand the 'tracer' reference, or if she would accidentally let slip the fact that Cam had a tracer during one of her drugged fits. No one was questioning her now while she was drugged, but it didn't mean that someone wasn't going to think of it eventually, so she settled for a simple command. She'd explain to Shana later when Shana was lucid and calm and rational, not fogged by drugs. :We have to stay together. No matter what. We have to stay together. I'll fight, Shana. You have to fight too:

:Fight. Okay: And then the door opened, and the guards came in.

"Stupid idiot!" One of them saw Cam reaching for Shana's hand and ran across the room to grab her arm. "Tie both hands down!"

"She's tiny. Can't do nobody no harm." The other guard snickered. "Besides, she seems to have a thing for the redhead." But the first guard secured Cam's free wrist to the wall, then got the second woman unchained and they took her out.

An unknown time later, they returned. "Didn't sell that one for as much as we hoped."

"Yeah, well, why bid on the Spanish and Africans when you can have the Testarossa? I guarantee you she's who they're waiting for, white skin, red hair, green eyes…she's the main reason all those owners are sitting out there. That last African slut we dragged out there hardly raised an eyebrow."

"I guarantee you that redhead will raise them." The guards snickered as they left the room with the fourth woman, another African.

And then they came back empty handed, and Cam screamed and went wild as they reached for the chins on Shana's wrists. "Shana! SHANA!"

Shana must have remembered Cam's signed directives…because she started to fight them, her screams for Cam lost in the gag still stuffed into her mouth, but her intention was obvious as she broke away from the guards and ran to Cam, wrapping her arms around the younger girl. Then lashing out with her feet when they tried to drag her away. Cam screamed too, kicking and fighting.

"Enough!" One guard finally panted. "Jesus, bring them both, we can't keep the bidders waiting!"

They unchained Cam's wrists from the wall and locked them together in front of her, then did the same to Shana. One stepped forward, leading Shana, but Shana refused to move until the second guard started moving too, bringing Cam with him. They stumbled down a long, dimly-lit hallway that terminated, quite suddenly, in a massive rusty iron door, and then the guard holding Shana's chain pushed the door open and led her through it. Cam's guard followed.

Both women stood blinking in the almost painfully-bright light. They were standing at the far end of one room, a floodlight on a pole rigged to shine directly down on a rough wooden warehouse pallet sitting on the floor. Even as their eyes tried to adjust, Shana's guard removed the gag, then gave her chain a hard jerk, yanking her forward off her feet and across the floor toward the wooden 'auction block'.

"Cam!" her eyes were still glazed from the drugs but she was definitely aware. She struggled, yanking back against the chain, digging her heels into the floor and trying to avoid being dragged onto the auction platform.

From out of nowhere a guard they hadn't seen before ran up with a cattle prod, and even as Cam screamed Shana's name, the end of it contacted Shana's right shoulder blade. She screamed in agony, her body convulsing, legs suddenly weak, but she never stopped fighting, not even when they shocked her again. Cam grabbed the chain around her wrists in her hands then gave a huge yank and jerked the chain from her own guard's grip, and ran to Shana, weakly convulsing on the concrete floor, crying in agony. She dropped to her knees beside the redhead, her own head dropping as she caressed Shana's shoulder with her still-bound hands, trying to help her calm down after the two punishing shocks she'd just taken.

That was when the guard with the cattle prod hit her with the electricity.

She heard herself scream as she fell forward over Shana's body, twitching. They had gotten her at the base of her spine, the small of her back where the nerves were closest to the skin, and dear God, it wasn't the first time she'd ever been hit with a cattle prod but it had been so damn long that she'd forgotten just now much the things hurt! She writhed, howling.

Beside her, Shana cried her name weakly and threw her arms out to protect Cam just as the prod came down to deliver another shock. The electricity hit the shackles around Shana's wrists instead.

Screaming, Absolute white-hot agony. Like someone was cutting her hands off, every nerve in her hands, wrists, and arms firing off at once, she heard a high pitched screaming and didn't realize it was herself until she heard Cam sob, "Shana…oh God, Shana…"

Shan couldn't speak, couldn't respond. Couldn't even coordinate her movement enough to protest as the guard who'd dragged her to the auction block tried to drag her up to complete the journey. That was when Cam lashed out, flicking the chain still wrapped around her wrist shackles across the guard's face. He stumbled back, howling as blood gushed from his nose, and the next second Cam was screaming as she was hit by the cattle prod again, but she was clawing her way across the floor, trying to reach Shana.

"Stop," came a cool voice from the front row, and Cam raised tear-blinded eyes to see who'd spoken. Tall, thin, blue eyes, sandy hair, a spotless perfectly-tailored suit-he looked absolutely normal except for the wheelchair he was sitting in.

"I have never seen such spirit from any slave here. These two must be remarkable indeed. Are you that determined to stay together?"

"We're friends. We knew each other growing up." Cam said defiantly, praying he would swallow the lie. "We were practically sisters."

"Well. Then." The man looked at the guards, smiled thinly, a cold, slightly reptilian smile that chilled Cam clear down to the bone. "Since the scarred one is just so much damaged meat, why not allow the two of them to stay together? Sell them together. It might even be amusing to pit these two…sisters…against each other." He turned to the small audience, mostly well-dressed men, behind him. "Am I right?"

A chorus of yes's answered the man, and then one man, just behind the wheelchair-bound suit, ventured, "Such spirit. It would indeed be a challenge to break them. I bid twenty five thousand euros for both!"

"Thirty thousand!"

"Forty thousand!"

"Forty-five thousand!"

The man in the wheelchair spoke more quietly than the other bidders, but his voce could still be heard. "Fifty thousand."

The first man who had spoken glared at him. "You always bid on the best ones, Damien. Leave some of the good stuff for us. Sixty thousand!"

"Seventy-five thousand." The man called 'Damien' didn't bat an eyelash; his cool demeanor didn't crack a bit.

"Eighty thousand!"

"Ninety."

As the bidding war went on behind them Cam dragged herself painfully to her knees. Every muscle and nerve in her body was firing at once, and she shook uncontrollably from the electrical impulses that still sizzled down her nerves, but she managed to crawl to Shana's side. Shana managed to sit up, clinging to Cam's arm, and the two women leaned against each other, still sobbing a little as they hugged, able to finally touch each other, hug each other, take comfort in the fact that they weren't going through this alone.

The man called Damien studied both of them intently; Cam hugged Shana tighter and glared at him. She didn't like him; there was something in him that reminded her too much of her uncle, something cold and cruel and merciless, and she fervently hoped that he wouldn't be the ones to buy them. She didn't like the way he looked at Shana. Didn't like the way he was looking at her.

As if he'd read her mind, a cold, cruel smile bloomed across his thin lips, and he said coolly into a momentary silence as the bidding faltered, "Two hundred and fifty thousand. American dollars, not Euros."

Silence descended in the auction room; neither Shana nor Cam could dare breathe. That was an astronomical sum of money, you could buy a house with that much money, and here he was buying two girls?

The auctioneer, who had been tracking the bids, cleared his throat nervously. "Master Damien. Sir. Are you sure…?"

"Yes, I am sure! Two hundred and fifty thousand American dollars! That is exactly what I said, and I mean what I say!" Damien snapped imperiously.

"Uh…uh,.. two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Okay, sold to Master Damien Kennedy for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!" The auctioneer cleared his throat. "Uh, sir, if you would like to step over here we can conclude the transaction—"

"Just a moment." Kennedy held up a hand. "I came here out of curiosity; I didn't come here expecting to buy a slave, much less two of them. You will have to warehouse them here for a couple of days while I make arrangements to take them with me. I will pay the storage and warehousing fees, but I want to lay some specific rules for your guards. One. They are now mine. No one is to hurt them sexually. I don't want the Testarossa even touched; if she refuses to do something, hurt the scarred one. The scarred one you can hurt as much as you need to in order to get the Testarossa to comply." He rolled his wheelchair up next to Shana and grabbed a handful of her hair, "Do you hear me, slave? I am allowing you and your sister to stay together but if you step out of line, she will pay the price, and since she was free, I don't care if she dies. If you don't want her to die you'll obey the guards. Do you understand?"

Shana nodded weakly, and Kennedy studied her for a moment before he allowed her head to fall back onto Cam's shoulder. "She is drugged. Did she come in addicted or did you give her drugs to keep her compliant?"

"She came in drugged and dependent. We continued it because it was easier to handle her that way." The guard sounded almost apologetic.

"Give her maintenance doses of whatever you've been giving her so far. Don't raise it, don't lower it. I will take care of any dependency issues she may have when I get her home. Now take her back to wherever it is you've been holding her and let me sign the paperwork."


	19. Chapter 43: Damien

**Chapter 43: Damien**

He pondered the mystery of the two women as he signed the paperwork.

_The Testarossa is magnificent. I can see why they chose to have a separate auction on deposit-only terms for the most exclusive buyers._ He'd gotten a brochure in the mail at his office here in Amsterdam advertising a sale of exotic cars, and among them was a mint-condition vintage Testarossa. The brochure had been a source of some amusement among his employees; after all, why would a man in a wheelchair want an exotic vintage sports car he couldn't personally drive himself? However, as the head of a very large international bank and brokerage firm, those immediate subordinates were paid too well to ask too many questions, and besides, he was rich, and wealth practically entitled you to eccentricity.

Damien Kennedy had always been thought of as 'eccentric'. Starting with early childhood, when his extremely wealthy parents had given him everything he ever wanted; the best nannies, the best tutors, the best toys, clothes, vacations all over the world, except what young Damien really wanted; his own parents. Left with a succession of nannies and tutors and governesses while growing up so his parents could travel the world on business and pleasure, brought along on these trips only because having a child, a family, would look good in certain circles to certain clients; young Damien had leaned very early on that selfishness was the name of the game here, in this world, that you got ahead only by being selfish, thinking of yourself first and what was good for you, and he'd adhered to that.

As he got older he was taken out of the care of tutors and nannies and placed in a number of boarding schools in various countries across the world. Switzerland, England, China, America. His parents explained that they did so because they wanted him to become familiar with different cultures and different languages. What Damien did acquire was a huge list of 'friends' from different countries; since these boarding schools were for the ultra-wealthy and upper-echelon diplomats and national figures and were, by and large, the elite of whatever country they were from, he'd accumulated a large network of personal contacts by the time he finished college at Washington DC's prestigious Georgetown University.

Not that he would ever call these people friends, no. He was a friend to all, but close to none. Friendly and affable, everybody's friend but nobody's best friend; those who liked him put it down to his upbringing, saying that he was just aloof because his parents moved him from school to school, and because of his 'shy' and retiring nature, he was rarely ever in one place long enough to make friends easily. Those who didn't like him said that he was antisocial and simply didn't see other people as people.

Had they only known it, they would have been surprised, shocked and a little uneasy at just how true that was. Damien didn't look at the people around him as people. They were tools to an end, that end being to accumulate so much wealth and power that he could dispense with having to deal with other people all together. People bored him; every person he'd ever met was self-serving, shallow, and narcissistic; it never once occurred to Damien that he himself was that way too. He was very good at saying what would please everyone, expressing views on political topics that placed him firmly in a centrist role, neither too far to the left nor too far to the right. He was welcome everywhere he went; he could make you feel like he was actually interested in what you were saying when what he was really doing was tuning people out. He did have a sharp eye for detail, though; details about the people around him, things people let slip and would never know that he knew unless they crossed him.

As was expected of a young rich man, scion to a wealthy banker, he took a succession of girlfriends, but none of them really interested him. The only thing he was interested in was power, and while there was power to be had in watching the young society women that traveled in the same circles he did fall over themselves and offer up their bodies in exchange for the prestige of being his girlfriend, he was selfish enough to want only the pretty ones and the pretty ones were the most empty-headed and vapid. There was no satisfaction in the power he held over them because they offered it up so easily; he lost his virginity when he was still in high school to an eager young cheerleader who he later tossed aside like a doll he was done playing with. She, in turn, stung by his refusal –the silly girl had honestly thought she was in love with him, and he with her, had spread it around school—but he, knowing her weak points (her vanity was one) succeeded in making her look so ridiculous that he turned public opinion against her and eventually she transferred out of the school. It was at that moment that he discovered that true satisfaction for him, was to establish power over someone and break them.

His college years were ruled by that same urge; he wooed girls, seduced them, took the sex they offered, then cast them off and made them objects of ridicule until they were ostracized from the society they'd grown up in. He enjoyed doing that, enjoyed watching them cry. When one girl, late one evening, in a fit of anger raised her hand to slap him, he raised his own hand and slapped her back, The moment when his vision cleared and he looked down, saw her huddled in a crying heap at his feet, holding a hand to a bruised cheek, that was the moment when he realized he took pleasure in physical and emotional pain.

But that girl went home to her parents and told them, and he got in trouble. As he stood in front of his father's desk and listened to his father lecture him on propriety and how to treat a lady, young Damien formed his own ideas from that lecture. A 'lady' was someone from his own circle; but if he did that to someone inferior, no one would complain. This he tried a few days later, taking his car out for a joyride, picking up a prostitute and beating her into almost-unconsciousness before he took her and left a couple of hundred dollar bills for her. And when no retribution descended on him for this act, he adopted it with a great deal of private satisfaction.

It was on one of his joyrides that retribution came for his excesses, though he didn't recognize it for retribution and would have scoffed if anyone had told him so; he crashed his Porsche into a tree late one night after yet another disgustingly satisfying tryst with yet another back-alley prostitute, this one who he left tied to a hotel bed with bruises that would take weeks to vanish. When he woke up in the hospital he experienced the first crisis if his life; he couldn't feel his legs. He had wrapped his Porsche sideways around the tree and a piece of the chassis had driven into his lower back, breaking his coccyx. The resulting soft tissue damage had created swelling that pressed down on the nerves in his lower spine and left him wholly incapable of feeling or moving his legs.

He'd fallen into black despair then, broken only by an even blacker rage as his parents used his condition to garner sympathy in all of their circles without feeling any kind of real concern for him themselves. However, as months of therapy stretched on, he saw how cleverly they manipulated public opinion around them to work to their advantage, and so, at the end of six months when he woke one morning and found himself able to feel his legs itching under the wool pajama pants he wore, he reorganized his plans for his life.

He became, to all outward appearances, a sober, steady, responsible young man, putting aside his rakehell ways and focusing on the business his father had been trying to push him into. Many people saw the poor crippled son of the banker, and Damien learned how to use sympathy to achieve his ends.

People seemed to have a peculiar blind spot about handicapped people like Damien. Wherever he went people were extra friendly, polite, courteous; he would sometimes dress in baggy, ugly clothes and get on public transportation just to watch people get up and move seats to accommodate his wheelchair. It gave him a childish feeling of pleasure, a little spark of meanly vindictive delight in watching them go out of their way to accommodate him. The lower spine swelling got better, and with it came returned movement to his lower half, but he never told his parents that he could walk, and he paid his doctor handsomely to keep it a secret as well. He'd discovered that his apparent handicap was yet another weapon he could use, and he used it.

And as he immersed himself more and more in the world of banks and finances, he learned where all the true power in the world lay; money. Keeping his eyes and ears opened exposed him to the peccadilloes of the other financial moguls, politicians, and society leaders around him, and he saw their affairs, their mistresses, wives, families, all surrounded by, and run on, money. He used the sympathy he got from others to support his deals, to supplement the mergers and acquisitions he brokered that earned him a spot in an international business magazine's list of top young international moneymakers. By the time he was thirty he was on top of the financial world, but despite all the money he had, he still felt like something was missing.

When he had been picking up prostitutes he'd loved the heady rush of power that gave him, but as far back as the night of the accident he'd been noticing that it wasn't as satisfying anymore. He wanted more. He wanted the ultimate drug. And then, one evening at a politician's party, he saw the host accost his maid in the kitchen, slap her hard enough to send her reeling to the floor. When the politician told Damien to 'punish' the maid as well by slapping her, then ordered the maid to stand still for Damien to hit, Damien found that ultimate drug.

This, then, was power. True power. To be able to force someone to do something they didn't want to do knowing he would use the obedience to hurt them—it was a heady power rush. And he wanted more. His parents and friends noticed that he suddenly seemed to be spending a lot of time with that politician, even going to Amsterdam with the man on a personal vacation.

That vacation, had anyone known it, was specifically to introduce Damien at the slave market. The politician was very active in the slave trade, funding the slavers and even buying some on occasion—the maid at the party had been one of his 'acquisitions'. With his guidance and advice, Damien became Master Damien Kennedy with the purchase of his first slave.

She had been African. Not very expensive, as slaves went, a few thousand, but it opened Damien up to a world he'd never been aware of before. She was older, an experienced slave, and Damien spent a week in Amsterdam with her catering to his every need and whim, serving as his punching bag when he felt like it.

The problem was that he couldn't take her home.

On the plane back to his parents' home in Washington DC he reflected casually. Killing her had been so easy, just a quick twist of her head on her neck, snapping it. But it had been too quick, and she hadn't suffered enough, and it really was a waste of a good slave.

And so he had looked around for a place where he, like the politician who was mentoring him, could indulge in his excesses in private. A tropical island struck his fancy, and a year after he had bought and killed his first slave, he had purchased a tropical island in the island country of Fiji and turned it into his own idea of paradise, golden sand, blue water all around, a lagoon in the center of the top of the island with a beautiful house, a solar power facility to provide electricity for that house, and smaller solar and wind turbines to provide power to cabins for the staff that tended the island house and the livestock that provided food whenever he was in residence. And, under the house, in the bedrock of the extinct volcano, he used natural lava tubes to hollow out a series of chambers, fitted out as cells for the future occupants, and also started a very quiet but eclectic collection of medieval torture instruments—his favorite time period was the Spanish Inquisition—and stored those in those chambers under the house.

By the time his parents died when he was forty-two he was not only one of the richest men who frequented the slave market in Amsterdam, but he was also a frequent buyer. The slaves he bought were never seen again; few of the slave dealers cared, and any new dealer who even casually asked where all his slaves went was told to shut up. Damien didn't tell anyone about the fishing platform on one side of his island, a fishing platform that overlooked a deep lagoon that was home to some of the most ferocious sharks. He had a lot in common with those sharks; fancied himself one of them as he stood on the edge of the platform listening to yet another used up female slave scream and beg and plead as he lowered her at the end of a winch to the sharks.

His parents dying changed a lot of his plans. They had left him everything they had, and, combined with his own considerable fortune, he found himself suddenly in the enviable position of never actually having to work another day in his life if he didn't want to. With his father's ailing health during his last few years of life, he'd had a man-of-business handle his affairs for both himself and his wife, Damien's mother, and as a result when Damien looked over the finances after the dirt was piled on the coffins and the funeral was over, he found himself with enough money and leisure that he could indeed be a fulltime slave owner. So he had handed his own affairs to his father's man of business, paid the man handsomely to continue running the businesses for Damien and only bother Damien with important deals that would interest him, spoken to the dealers at the slave market, telling them he wanted a slave that was exotic, unusual, different. And then he'd gotten the dealer's brochure disguised as a car auction.

He had caught his breath at the first sight of the pale-skinned, lightly-freckled redhead that had been dragged in at the end of the chain. She was indeed beautiful—but he wasn't just looking for mere beauty, he wanted something else, something more, and he'd been about to leave the auction when the redhead started fighting, and so had the scarred, damaged slave who had been dragged in behind her.

Their screaming and pain excited him, but even more intriguing was the way they were fighting, and the reasons why. They were fighting for and with each other, careless of their own pain as long as they could save the other. It had been astounding; Damien had never ever seen anyone who would endure pain for another person; he'd heard stories of people who swore they'd give up their lives for each other but he had never encountered it in person and had no frame of reference for what he was seeing. The way the two girls clung to each other, and particularly the fiercely protective look the scarred one had given him as she watched him and listened to the bidding war. That look was what had made him decide to buy them, right then and there, and he had offered top price for them.

Now he just had to figure out how to get them out of Amsterdam and out to his private island.

He finished signing the last of the paperwork that would allow the dealers to accept a wire transfer of a quarter of a million dollars for the two women and picked up his phone, dialed a number. "Viktor," he said when the person he'd called picked up. "Do me a favor and send out my private plane. I've made a purchase—a couple, actually—here in Amsterdam and I want them transported to my island. Send Hans with the Lear; I'll need his expertise with a question of some chemical dependency. Yes, I know he's persona non grata in Amsterdam after that little fiasco with the scalpels and the little street urchin, but he's never going to leave the plane and the authorities will never know he was here. My Testarossa has some—chemical dependencies that I need Hans to diagnose and advise me on." Silence for a moment. Then, "Oh, the other purchase. She is for the staff, to reward their faithful service; the only reason I purchased her at all is because if she is threatened the Testarossa will do whatever is asked of her. It's a potent weapon and I intend to take full advantage of it. Yes. All right, have the coffin prepared, like we usually do, but have two of them and two military uniforms."

He switched off the phone, looked at the dealers. "My private plane will be here tomorrow. Once it gets here there will be two coffins in it along with two sets of military fatigues. My doctor will examine them to be sure I am getting what I paid for, then I will drug them both to ensure that they do not wake, and three days from now I will have them home. It's been a pleasure dealing with you." Which it actually wasn't, he could care less, but he was very good at saying what people wanted to hear, and these dealers were no different. They smiled, shook his hand, and he turned and wheeled himself away, thinking gleefully of all the things he would do to the redhead when he got her home…

**Author's Note:** And here is the end of Part 2. The next part will start going up next weekend. I will say that it was a difficult section of the story to write, and I have tried very very hard not to make it too graphic, but if you'rea fan of my writing but not a fan of...gritty reality...then I would recommend that you skip part 3 and wait for part 4. Part 3 will be posted under the 'M' category due to several reviewers' comments that they were somewhat disturbed by sections ofthe previous two novels. I have spent some time rewriting part 4 so that reading part 3 is not entirely necessary to figure out what happened-and Damien Kennedy's trial in the next novel will also provide some fill-in detail.


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